In February of 1915, a fifty-five year old woman, who we will call Ella, was admitted to London’s Colney Hatch Asylum, exhibiting symptoms that doctors defined as “mental stress.” For the past three weeks, she was, according to her case notes, “noisy and restless … she gets little sleep … it is difficult to persuade… Read more →
Tag: Gender
Real Men & Real Food: The Cultural Politics of Male Weight Loss
When Weight Watchers first launched an online program “customized just for guys” in 2007, one of their advertisements proclaimed, “Real men don’t diet.” This counterintuitive declaration evoked the questions that animate my current research. I’m analyzing how the consumer culture constructs notions of “real men” through depictions of food and the body, particularly during moments… Read more →
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 a direct application of breast milk. From the time my husband cut a nail too short to a slightly more serious case of pink eye, my friends and family had come to regard breast milk… Read more →
A Quiet Inquisition
When Delma Rosa Gómez was 27 years old, she was diagnosed with advanced stages of metastatic cancer. When she told her physician she was pregnant, they replied that they couldn’t start chemotherapy. “They said any treatment could provoke an abortion. And they couldn’t give me an abortion because it was penalized by law. They said… Read more →
Coin-Operated Boys: An Interview with Carly Kocurek
Carly Kocurek’s Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) examines the origins of modern video game culture in the “classic” arcade era, spanning the release of Pong in 1972 and the industry’s first major collapse in 1983. She traces the formation of the “technomasculine” during that period, as the arcade became… Read more →
Itinerant Tacos: A Brief History of Tortilla Factories
The squeaky wheels, the baking corn masa, and the silver behemoth carrying golden circles on a metal conveyor — the sights, sounds, and smells of tortillerías invoke memories of childhood visits to Mexico. However, tortillerías, or tortilla factories, increasingly dot the United States, illustrating a lingering cultural tie to the region south of the border…. Read more →
NC at the Berks
Nursing Clio is out in force at this year’s Berkshire Conference of Women Historians in New York! We’ve gathered together a list of all the sessions where you can find Nursing Clio writers, contributors, and editors presenting on gender, history, public health, sexuality, digital media, and more. Reach out to us on Twitter @nursingclio or… Read more →
For the Love of Data: Science, Protest, and Power at Love Canal
For many environmental activists and scientists, the phrase “Love Canal” remains indelibly marked in the imagination. A toxic waste site that pitted scientists and citizens against the government, it is heralded as one of the first successes of the environmental movement in holding the state accountable for the public health of its residents. In 1896,… Read more →
Helen Atwater: The First Lady of American Nutrition You’ve Never Heard Of
When I was researching the history of American food guides, I came across one of the earliest resources, “How to Select Foods,” published in 1917 by Hunt and Atwater. At first I assumed that this Atwater was Wilbur Olin Atwater, the man so often heralded as “The Father of American Nutrition.” I was wrong. It… Read more →
A Post-Racial Gilead? Race and Reproduction in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale
In the Texas state legislature last month, several women dressed as handmaids sat in silent judgment over the lawmakers who were attempting (yet again) to outlaw an abortion procedure. Since last November’s election, sales of dystopian literature, including Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, have skyrocketed. A number of writers, perhaps most notably Rebecca Traister, have… Read more →