A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Like a virgin? Moon landings and Nazis. Enslaved people […]
Fictional Detectives and Real-Life Forensic Science
On April 10, 1935, Lord Hugh Montague Trenchard, the Commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, invited policemen and politicians to celebrate […]
True Fake Crime
On April 1, 2019, news broke that Awkwafina and Ike Barinholtz are producing and starring in a movie named Crime […]
The Eugenicists on Abortion
Clarence Thomas recently issued a twenty-page opinion on the Supreme Court decision Box v. Planned Parenthood that went viral because […]
Najila and Neymar; or, The Normalization of Violence against Women in Brazil
You may have heard of Neymar, Brazil’s soccer darling.1 With the speed and skill to rival the all-time greats, he’s […]
Louis “The Laughing Eel” Ross and the Road of No Return: Incarcerating the “Criminally Insane”
In 1921 a burglar called the “Laughing Eel” began serving a ten-year prison term, but it was 33 years before […]
A Tale of Two Midwives across Four Centuries
What happens when the person who delivers most of the babies in her community is arrested? This is a tale […]
The Anti-Abortion Politics of White Women
Last month, the Alabama State Senate passed a piece of legislation effectively banning abortion in the state of Alabama. House […]
Armchair Detectives and the Allure of Death in Miniature at the Smithsonian
It was one of the coldest January days in recent memory, but that didn’t seem to deter the crowds inside […]
Murder, She Miniatured: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
Homemaking and Homicide From the outside, Frances Glessner Lee’s childhood home resembled a prison. H. H. Richardson designed the home […]
