By Jacqueline Antonovich
-A menstruating leg ulcer?
-New Da Vinci mural discovered.
-Exorcist healing in the 18th century.
-An interactive map of slave rebellions.
-Early modern breast cancer treatments.
Feeling Lonesome This Halloween?: Nineteenth-Century Love Charms and Halloween Party Games
By Sean Cosgrove
Are you a single woman or man staring down the barrel of another Halloween spent curled up in bed with too much cheap candy corn you’ve bought in bulk from Walgreen’s under the auspices of being prepared for the hordes of trick-or-treaters that were never going to descend on your home?
Or, are you perhaps happily single or happily partnered and looking for the perfect Halloween party game? One you’ve probably never heard of before with a nice historical bent?
Even if the answer is no to both of those questions (and I would be very surprised), I still want you to grab a piece of paper and a pen, and get ready to embrace the Halloween spirit. Today, NursingClio is taking you back to the 1890s, my favourite historical decade, and bringing to you some of the ‘charms and spells’ guaranteed (if certain conditions are met) to be ‘cast with infallible certainty of result,’ bringing true love into your life.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-The history of yoga.
-Let’s revisit 90s mall culture.
-Medieval pets had names too.
-The fright of marrying an ugly man.
-Unsettling drafts of Cold War billboards.
The Links between Optional Parenthood and Reproductive Rights
By Heather Munro Presscott
Last summer, Time Magazine published a cover story declaring “Childfree Adults Are Not ‘Selfish,'” in which Carolina A. Miranda recounts her decision to not have children: “This should not seem that radical. But 52 years after the advent of the birth control pill, and more than a century after the word ‘feminism’ was first coined, a woman’s decision not to have children remains fraught. It is also very public, relentlessly scrutinized by psychologists, politicians, statisticians and the media, who gather to discuss what it may mean — for women, for the funding of Social Security, for Western civilization as we know it. This past winter, a pair of Newsweek writers — of the dude persuasion — went on a gloom-and-tirade (sic) about declining birth rates and the self-involved young adults that are causing them.”
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Hunky history: the male nude.
-The man who forgot everything.
-The Victorian version of the GIF.
-Baseball’s forgotten experiment.
-Ancient grills: gem-studded teeth.
-Campy photos of Communist spies.
Sex and Disability, Part 1
By Adam Turner
In September, BBC news ran a story titled, Judge Approves Man’s Sterilisation in Legal First. I started reading the story expecting a familiar case of medical authority and restrictive assumptions of what is and isn’t normal leading to surgical intervention. Not so. At least not exactly. Partway through the first few paragraphs of the news report I knew this story was much more complicated than I had imagined.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-A short history of Bookmobiles.
-A 1,600 year-old murder mystery.
-Canada’s sexy new Gonorrhea ads.
-A beautiful air travel map from 1929.
-UN sued over Haiti cholera epidemic.
-The lost legacy of the British Black Panthers.
-Audio files of Auschwitz survivors now online.
Reflections on Transitions: How my Transgender Issues Class has Changed in the Last Fifteen Years
By Elizabeth Reis
In 1998 I taught a new class at the University of Oregon called “Transgender History, Identity, and Politics.” Back then there were only one or two students who knew what “transgender” meant when I asked them on the first day of class. The others had enrolled either because the class hours fit their time schedules or because they had taken other classes with me and liked my teaching style (or had received a good grade!). I have taught the class several times over the past fifteen years, but this term I have noticed a distinct difference; it’s astonishing how the class composition and its general knowledge about the subject has been transformed in such a relatively short time. Change happens.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Nazi bride school.
-A haunting WWII memorial.
-1948 photo essay of a “career girl.”
-A history of knives, forks, and spoons.
-What’s it like to live in a house museum?
The Blame Game: Searching for Historical Complexity
By Carrie Adkins
I am almost finished with my Ph.D. This fall I’ll defend my dissertation on the history of gynecology and obstetrics in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States, and then – barring some unforeseen disaster – I’ll finally be able to make everybody I know call me “doctor.” At this point, I should be a genuine expert on my topic, and in some ways, I guess I am. Want to hear about the dangers of childbirth in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era? Curious about the history of surgeries like clitoridectomy and hysterectomy? Want to talk about racism and eugenics as applied to female bodies? I’m your girl. Let’s have coffee. Just don’t blame me when you start having horrific nightmares about vesicovaginal fistula and pubic symphysiotomy.
