In September of 1747, Rosa de Menezes went into labor in her home in the poorest quarter of Goa, the […]
If You See Something, Say Something: Imperial Origins of White Women’s Modern Racial Profiling
In 2018, confrontations between white women and people of color in the United States have become viral news bytes emblematic […]
When Pain is Political: Paulette Nardal and Black Women’s Citizenship in the French Empire
October 12 marks the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Martinican writer and intellectual Paulette Nardal. It also marks 79 […]
The Persistence of Félicité Kina: Kinship, Gender, and Everyday Resistance
In January of 1803, the sixteen-year-old Félicité-Adelaïde Kina (née Quimard) traveled from Paris to Pontarlier to protest the imprisonment of […]
Sex, Death, and Atole at the Royal Indian Hospital
Mexico City, 18th Century For the wounded, diseased, and ailing of Mexico City, just about anything was better than the […]
Locating Enslaved Black Wet Nurses in the Literature of French Slavery
[gpullquote class=”aligncenter”]“Enslaved women and their children enter the archives in little more than fragments.”1[/gpullquote] In George Sand’s 1832 idealist novel, […]
Lizards and the Idea of Mexico
In the summer of 1782, Don Juan de Luna, a respected elder citizen of the City of Mexico, nearly choked […]
Health Care in Colonial Peruvian Convents
Last May I had the opportunity to conduct archival research in Arequipa, Peru. I went in search of fodder for […]
Fleas, Fleas, Fleas
In September, I turned on Democracy Now! and came into a story about the mass extinction of a third of […]
The Magic Liquid that Guarantees the Life of the Infant: Breast Milk as a Superfood
“Try squirting milk on that.” I stopped keeping track of how many times someone recommended healing my newborn’s ailments with […]