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 […]
Labor, Birth, and Superstitions
On the morning that my daughter-in-law went into labor, a small bird crashed into our apartment window and lay dead […]
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Rethinking Anne Boleyn. Slavery and the family tree. A […]
Between the Pages: Victorian Women’s Letters to H. Lenox Hodge
This essay was first published at Fugitive Leaves, the blog of The History Medical Library of The College of Physicians […]
Abortion: The Archive Doesn’t Lie, but Republicans Do
There’s a story whispered among my family about one of my grandmother’s cousins. She died sometime in the early 1960s […]
A Brief History of “Bouncing Back”
So the world has witnessed yet another round of the Royal Baby bonanza — from tracking Meghan Markle’s maternity style, […]
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Sex, art, and misogyny. The first mom in space. […]
“Our Moral Obligation:” The Pastors That Counseled in Pre-Roe South Carolina
On December 8, 1971, a Presbyterian pastor in Greenville, SC counseled three women on their “problem pregnancies,” ultimately connecting them […]
From Hospital to Home: Wendy Kline’s Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth
Wendy Kline has delivered a new addition to the history of childbirth in America. In her engaging and well-researched book, […]
