By Jacqueline Antonovich
-The history of yoga.
-Let’s revisit 90s mall culture.
-Medieval pets had names too.
-The fright of marrying an ugly man.
-Unsettling drafts of Cold War billboards.
The Links between Optional Parenthood and Reproductive Rights
By Heather Munro Presscott
Last summer, Time Magazine published a cover story declaring “Childfree Adults Are Not ‘Selfish,'” in which Carolina A. Miranda recounts her decision to not have children: “This should not seem that radical. But 52 years after the advent of the birth control pill, and more than a century after the word ‘feminism’ was first coined, a woman’s decision not to have children remains fraught. It is also very public, relentlessly scrutinized by psychologists, politicians, statisticians and the media, who gather to discuss what it may mean — for women, for the funding of Social Security, for Western civilization as we know it. This past winter, a pair of Newsweek writers — of the dude persuasion — went on a gloom-and-tirade (sic) about declining birth rates and the self-involved young adults that are causing them.”
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Hunky history: the male nude.
-The man who forgot everything.
-The Victorian version of the GIF.
-Baseball’s forgotten experiment.
-Ancient grills: gem-studded teeth.
-Campy photos of Communist spies.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-Nazi bride school.
-A haunting WWII memorial.
-1948 photo essay of a “career girl.”
-A history of knives, forks, and spoons.
-What’s it like to live in a house museum?
The Blame Game: Searching for Historical Complexity
By Carrie Adkins
I am almost finished with my Ph.D. This fall I’ll defend my dissertation on the history of gynecology and obstetrics in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States, and then – barring some unforeseen disaster – I’ll finally be able to make everybody I know call me “doctor.” At this point, I should be a genuine expert on my topic, and in some ways, I guess I am. Want to hear about the dangers of childbirth in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era? Curious about the history of surgeries like clitoridectomy and hysterectomy? Want to talk about racism and eugenics as applied to female bodies? I’m your girl. Let’s have coffee. Just don’t blame me when you start having horrific nightmares about vesicovaginal fistula and pubic symphysiotomy.
Tits aren’t News – The Power of the Online Campaign
By Helen McBride
Last week I spoke at an event for Youth Action Northern Ireland, an organization that strives to make a significant difference in the lives of young people in Northern Ireland. One of the ways they carry out this mission is through their Gender Equality Unit, working “with those young women who are most excluded from resources and society to try to improve their access.” Part of this work is informed by the desire to challenge “traditional expectations of young women,” particularly those which deny their potential and their opportunities.
My Miscarriage (Is Not Your Miscarriage)
By Carrie Pitzulo
Recently, Marjorie Ingall, writing for the Tablet, discusses the complicated – but sometimes very simple – feelings women have about their abortions or miscarriages. In “My Abortion, My Miscarriage, and My Right To Have My Own Feelings,” Ingall presents a sensitive, levelheaded rendering of her own spectrum of reproductive experiences. She describes the relief she felt at terminating a pregnancy in her youth, and the overwhelming sadness she felt at a later miscarriage, before having two healthy children. Ingall points out the lack of cultural acceptance of women’s wide variety of feelings about their own lives: “No matter what we feel—sadness at a miscarriage, relief at an abortion—women are told their feelings aren’t legitimate. Someone—a politician, a friend, a member of the clergy—invariably tells us to buck up if we’re devastated by the loss of a wanted pregnancy, and/or to hate ourselves if we’re not devastated to end an unwanted one.”
This is the Culture of Sexual Violence
There are two family pictures in a box of photographs that are the only few I have of my father and me. My mother always told me my father doted on me and I was definitely becoming “daddy’s little girl.” Yet, the images of a seemingly happy family are overshadowed by the knowledge that at the time these two pictures were taken, my father had or was raping his stepdaughter: my teenage sister.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-10 snack foods that started out as medicines.
-3 ways cooking has changed over the past 300 years.
-Did the Temperance Movement almost kill root beer?
-Do babies develop food allergies through damaged skin?
-Judge in UK authorizes a forced sterilization.
-Birth, infanticide and midwifery in early modern Scotland.
The Principle: A Short History of Finance’s Glass Ceiling
By Austin C. McCoy
The debate over who should serve as the next chairperson of the Federal Reserve (Fed) is indicative of the glass ceiling that persists in the world of finance. Many consider President Obama’s former economic adviser, Larry Summers, as the front runner to serve as the next chairperson of the Fed once current chairman Ben Bernanke steps down next year. Yet, several Democrats, economists, and journalists have voiced their support for the current Vice Chairwoman of the Fed’s Board of Governors, Janet Yellen.