When I criticized Hobby Lobby for its attempts to evade the Obamacare contraceptive mandate, a friend of mine thoughtfully replied, […]
Punishing Pushy Women: Gender and Power in the Newsroom
Until last week, Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times, was considered the nineteenth most powerful woman in […]
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-E. coli and bacterial sex.
-Rare footage of FDR walking.
-Leprosy vaccine scientist dies.
-Poverty among Holocaust survivors.
-Can the measles vaccine cure cancer?
-The racist roots of common phrases.
-The 19th-century vegetable version of Viagra.
Is Contraception “Health Care”? The Hobby Lobby Case
by Lara Freidenfelds
As we wait for the Supreme Court to render a decision on the Hobby Lobby contraception coverage case, I have been pondering the historical relationship between contraception and health care. Is it obvious that contraception should be considered part of “health care?” And would it be possible to decide that it isn’t, but still make it affordable and available? This case seems, to me, to rest largely on whether we think contraception counts as health care. The justices are wary of an outcome that would allow employers to decline to pay for blood transfusions or routine vaccinations, even if an employer might genuinely have religious reservations about those procedures. Those are clearly health care. Contraception, though, seems different. It is prescribed for healthy people, and it does not cure or prevent disease (at least not directly).
Eirebrushed: Erasing Women from Irish History
By Helen McBride
A new play opened in Dublin this week called Eirebrushed. Written by Brian Merriman, the play tells the story of Elizabeth O’Farrell, whose role as combatant has been quite literally airbrushed out of Irish history and the 1916 Easter Rising. The Easter Rising of 1916 was a significant rebellion against British colonization and, while it ultimately failed, it sparked a series of events that eventually lead to the independence of Ireland (first as the Irish Free State, a dominion of the British Commonwealth, in 1922, and then as the independent Republic of Ireland in 1948). Elizabeth O’Farrell, a midwife and member of Cumann na mBan (the League of Women), has been described as a “fierce Republican” and played a significant role in the rebellion of 1916. O’Farrell actively fought for the independence of Ireland from British colonization before and during the Easter Rising, delivering bulletins and instructions to the rebel outposts around Dublin. As Eirebrushed brings to our attention, her legacy, and those of other women active in the movement, has been diminished in the commemoration of the Easter Rising and its role in sparking the Irish Civil War.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Vintage Vegas!
-‘Till sickness do us part…
-The lost village of New York City.
-Maternal deaths falling worldwide.
-Polio is now an international emergency.
-Chasing death camp guards with new tools.
-What is the C-section rate of your hospital?
Medicine, Modernity, and the Maternal Body
by Jodi Vandenberg-Daves
When I set out to write a synthesis of the history of motherhood in the U.S. back in 2008, I’d been teaching a course by that name for more than a decade. I didn’t anticipate that as I explored this history, I would soon witness a multi-faceted and partisan assault on reproductive rights. Perhaps this political context was part of the reason I found that, as I dug ever deeper into this scholarship, questions about the modernization of the maternal body and the various political tensions embedded within this process kept bubbling to the surface.
Hip Hop Breaks Silence on Mental Health: Pharoahe Monch’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
By Austin McCoy
While some hip hop artists and groups have addressed the issue of healthy eating, few have tackled mental health. Hip hop’s distant relationship with mental health should not be surprising, as many African Americans have considered issues such as depression, suicide, and other mental and psychiatric ailments taboo. Last month, the suicide of For Brown Girls’ creator and blogger, Karyn Washington, served as a reminder of the enduring silence of African American depression sufferers. Washington’s death provoked conversations among black members of the media about mental health. Coincidentally, rapper Pharoahe Monch released his fourth album—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)—a week after Washington’s passing. In the album, Monch highlights the intersections of the stresses of inner city life, drug use, suicide, and the structural and cultural barriers to pursuing mental health care. PTSD just might serve as the perfect opening to a conversation on African American mental health.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-WWI in photos.
-Oral histories of the homeless.
-Historians vs. the Nixon Library.
-Why the passenger pigeon went extinct.
-A people’s history of Muslims in the U.S.
-Early modern remedies for unwanted lust.
-Portraits of early 20th century gay culture.
The Gender Trap: The Problem of Raising Boys As Warriors
By Sean Cosgrove
It strikes me as odd that having identified a crisis of masculinity in our young boys that anyone would suggest these same boys should be raised more like ‘warriors’ than they otherwise would have been. And yet, Maggie Dent, a former high school teacher and counsellor, suggested at the beginning of this year that many of the social ills facing young men today—from Sydney’s king-hit culture to lacklustre personal and academic performance—are related to a broader societal problem of strangling the masculinity out of the boy.
