Dr. Hanne Blank Boyd is a writer, editor, and consultant whose published work lies at the intersection of bodies, selves, and cultures. Publishing under the name Hanne Blank, she is the author or editor of ten books that include Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press), Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury), and most recently FAT (Bloomsbury, 2020). Formerly… Read more →
Tag: Books
Pregnancy Test: An Interview with Karen Weingarten
Karen Weingarten is a regular contributor to Nursing Clio and Associate Professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. She has just published a new book titled Pregnancy Test and is the author of Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880- 1940. Lara: How did you get interested in researching the history and culture… Read more →
The Slow Moon Climbs: Talking Menopause with Susan Mattern
Recently, I heard an interview with TV anchor Gayle King on the NPR show On Point about her career as a journalist, her recent interview with R. Kelly, and her experience working in a visual field while aging. One caller mentioned the “menopause pooch,” and congratulated King for redefining what a TV anchor looks like. In… Read more →
Is a Historian’s Library an Archive or a Living Thing?
This week I purged my bookshelves. As a Ph.D. historian, it initially felt like a risky move — somewhere in between disowning my former self and cutting out part of my brain. In the end, though, I think the effect will be closer to pruning a big, old, tangled shrub so that it has some… Read more →
Who Was the Original “Welfare Queen?”: Review of Josh Levin’s The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth
How do you tell a story about a real-life, embodied individual who inspired a stereotype, without reducing her life to fit into the same trope you are trying to upend? How do you uncover the exception that proved the rule without reifying the label you acknowledge is pernicious? I’m not sure, and Josh Levin sure… Read more →
Nursing Clio Presents Its Third Annual Best Of List
Let’s face it, we all knew 2017 was going to be a garbage fire. But in between the political nightmares, nazis, and general terribleness, there were moments in 2017 that gave us life. Nursing Clio presents its third annual Best Of list. Favorite Book Laura Ansley: I can never pick just one. But favorite fiction this year… Read more →
A Historian’s Trip to the Graveyard
bardo, noun (In Tibetan Buddhism) a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in length according to a person’s conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death. Origin: Tibetan bár-do, from bar “interval” + do “two.”1 For someone who spends their time obsessing over history, I don’t read much historical fiction. Given… Read more →
Almost Fourteen: The Book That Stopped Me in My Research Tracks
One of the things I always warn people about before their first archival trip is just how boring historical research can be. We sit for days in silent archives, flipping through folders of papers, hoping to find little tidbits that we can build into a cohesive narrative about the past. (Thank goodness for the invention… Read more →
Quinine, Magic Pollen, and the British Empire in Fiction
Hands down, my favorite book of 2016 (and possibly ever) was The Watchmaker of Filigree Street. I read it with my Dessert Book Club, and every member either loved it or found some degree of enjoyment in it.1 And believe me — in the DBC, our tastes vary greatly, and it is rare that we… Read more →
Option Whatever: The Corporatization of Grief in Sheryl Sandberg’s Option B
Two years ago, my husband Clayton was murdered. That summer, I wrote a lot in my journal. I felt angry at how so many people reacted to Clayton’s death. I wanted to memorialize our memories together. I wanted to remember through writing. I snarkily told my family I was going to publish my own how-to… Read more →