As we await the high-stakes decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, state legislatures have been proposing and passing […]
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. […]
Why We Should Recognize Dr. Katharine Bement Davis Alongside Dr. Alfred Kinsey as a Pioneering Sex Researcher
In 1917, when Dr. Katharine Bement Davis accepted philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s invitation to lead the Bureau of Social […]
What Britney Spears’s Forced IUD Can Teach Us About Women’s History
When Britney Spears announced that she was forced to use long-term birth control in the form of an IUD and […]
Finding Friendship and Frustration in the Archive of an Institution for the “Feebleminded”
The methodology proposed by “Archival Kismet” is to go where the archive leads you (while bearing in mind, of course, […]
Making Medical History: The Sociologist Who Helped Legalize Birth Control
When sociology and economics professor Norman E. Himes published The Medical History of Contraception in 1936, he had made a […]
Right All the Way Through: Dr. Minerva Goodman and the Stockton Mask Debate during the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic
During the 1918-19 influenza epidemic, Stockton, California, adopted a mask ordinance three times, totalling more than seventy days. In late […]
“Containment and Control, Not Care or Cure”: An Interview with Elizabeth Catte on Virginia’s Eugenics Movement
In Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia, Dr. Elizabeth Catte expertly investigates and contextualizes the local history […]
“I Assumed It Was Urgent”: Helen Hurd’s Story
As an archivist, I gain deep knowledge of people through their personal papers. I come to appreciate their senses of […]
Reclaiming Disability Space in an Ableist Society: A Review of Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility
Former president Donald Trump publicly mocked and disparaged disabled people, weakened the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals […]