I was born seven weeks after my mother found out she was pregnant. I was not a medical miracle — […]
The Japanese Imperial Family Invented
In May 2019, as now Emperor Emeritus Akihito passed the Chrysanthemum Throne to his son Emperor Naruhito, the world watched […]
This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long […]
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news The prince of quacks. Too many episiotomies. The history […]
Desire Work, Gender, and Sexuality in South African Ex-Gay Ministries: A Conversation with Melissa Hackman
In her new book, Desire Work: Ex-Gay and Pentecostal Masculinity in South Africa, Dr. Melissa Hackman examines the experiences of […]
Openness and Authority in Pregnancy: Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves
I began reading Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos on my own due date, desperately trying to keep busy […]
The Power of Corporate Interests Over Home Baking
In 1840, the American press widely circulated illustrations of Queen Victoria’s wedding cake. It was a 300-pound, 14-inch-tall and 10-foot-wide […]
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news The abortion pastels. Being black in Nazi Germany. Colonialism […]
Complicating the Canon of the First World War: A Review of Ellen La Motte’s Backwash of War, edited by Cynthia Wachtell
Think back on any syllabi of the First World War and the literature represented in it. For me, those titles […]
A Woman Who Wrote About War: Recovering Ellen N. La Motte’s The Backwash of War
I love the old American spiritual “Down by the Riverside.” In fact, my first book borrows its title, War No […]
