One Saturday in June 2000, a small crowd gathered on the grounds of the University of Cincinnati (UC) Medical Center. They congregated around a plaque that had been placed a few months prior as a ceremonial end to years of litigation. Among the crowd was the case’s presiding judge, Sandra Beckwith of the Southern District… Read more →
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Feeding Fascism, Gender, and Food Work: An Interview with Diana Garvin
Rather than fearsome dictators, tabletop politics take center stage in Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work, a new book published in 2022 with the University of Toronto Press by Diana Garvin, Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Oregon. Feeding Fascism considers Italian women’s everyday experiences under fascism through their efforts to… Read more →
The Crisis of Overmedicating Foster Children
In 2009, Gabriel Myers, a seven-year-old foster child in Florida, hanged himself in the bathroom of his home due to the side effects of psychiatric drugs. Gabriel was taking multiple psychiatric medications, and his foster father stated that the doctor would spend about five minutes with Gabriel before sending him off to the pharmacy with… Read more →
Healing on Credit: Medical Bills and the Politics of Medicine in Eighteenth-Century Pondichéry
Jacques Albert, the surgeon-major of Pondichéry, India, probably thought that Marie Cuperly was “good for it” when it came to paying her outstanding medical bill. He put that belief to the test in 1711 when Cuperly, his patient of more than five years, died. Just hours after she passed away, Albert submitted a petition to… Read more →
COVID-19 Vaccines and Children: What Is All the Fuss About?
On October 19, 2021, the FDA authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in children 5 to 11 years of age. With the COVID-19 vaccine now approved for use in younger children, many parents are asking the question: should my child get the vaccine? As we have already seen, many states are beginning to… Read more →
Abortion Rights and the Eugenic and Racist Origins of Having It All
As we await the high-stakes decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, state legislatures have been proposing and passing restrictions on access to abortion knowing that the Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming months. On May 2, a leaked draft of a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito indicated… Read more →
The Applied Behavior Analysis Controversy: Normalizing or Cruel?
One parent said, “Our involvement with ABA remains one of my biggest parenting regrets.” Another said, “This treatment saved my son from an isolated and non-productive life. ” A third: “The first consultation was trying.” These are just a few testimonials regarding Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), a therapeutic modality for autistic children that involves using… Read more →
Holworthy Hall’s The Man Nobody Knew and Facial Wound Narratives after World War I
In his 1919 novel The Man Nobody Knew, Holworthy Hall introduced readers to Richard Morgan, a fictional American soldier who enlisted in the French Foreign Legion during World War I.[1] Disaffected from his hometown of Syracuse, New York and a broken engagement, Morgan fought in the war to prove his worth to society. Authorities reported… Read more →
Maintenance Phase: A Podcast that Wants You to Talk about Fatness
In an episode about Angela Lansbury’s fitness book-video-combo, Positive Moves, Maintenance Phase co-host Aubrey Gordon observed that “it is really difficult to disentangle our motives for weight loss from our attitudes towards fat people.” This small statement captures a central thesis of the incredibly popular podcast. That is, our cultural imagination of “fatness” – or… Read more →
Bodies of Uncertainty
I hadn’t even entered my brief, early-pandemic bread baking phase when other people’s fears about “pandemic weight gain” became unavoidable. I have been fat for my entire life, and as a fat person who does not diet I have become very skilled at avoiding conversations about other people’s fear of weight gain that might cause… Read more →