Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it takes a long time to write a book. It takes so long, in fact, that when a new book just happens to coincide with an eerily relevant global crisis, it presents a largely unexpected opportunity for the author to make the case for her work’s importance. All… Read more →
Tag: history
What to Read in a Pandemic
Nursing Clio editors and writers share their favorite books on disease, social anxiety, and resilience to help you get through COVID-19. Cassia Roth: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks details a year in the life of an English town during a plague epidemic. Its protagonist, Anna Frith, will take you along on her terrifying, and… Read more →
Teaching Abélard and Héloïse
One of the wearying inevitabilities of 2018 was that even the most cursory glance at the news was likely to bring you a fresh tale of sexual assault — in politics, the entertainment industry and, closer to home for me, academia. Much of the resulting commentary was almost as jarring as the news articles themselves…. Read more →
Lillie Western, Banjo Queen
It should come as no surprise that the Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists list includes only two women, Bonnie Raitt at #89 and Joni Mitchell at #75. The unyielding maleness of guitar culture stretches across decades and genres, even in the face of necessary corrections like Gayle Wald’s biography of Sister Rosetta Tharpe or the… Read more →
Reframing the Pregnancy Story: On Literature, Stitching, and Lost Narratives
My Story When I found out I was pregnant on July 1, 2016, I thought it was the beginning of a story to which I knew the ending. My partner, Carter, and I had only just decided to try to become pregnant. It was our first attempt and it was a success! What a wonderful,… Read more →
“Hateful, Un-American Ideas!” Gender, Race, and Politics in Cold War Romance Comic Books
In the October 1949 issue of the romance comic Hollywood Confessions, the protagonist of the story “Too Ugly to Love” describes himself as so ugly that he resembles a “menace from a horror picture.”1 Jon Koslo has “accepted … [his] ugliness philosophically!” when a film producer spots him and “exploits [his] ugliness” by giving him… Read more →
The Heifer and Its Lymph: The Animal Vaccine Establishment’s Register Book
Few people I know like working at the UK National Archives. They find it too impersonal, too frigid, too strict. But since I first worked there in July 2014, it has become my archival home. The place is dependable — you can always find silence in the reading rooms, good espresso in the ground-floor café,… Read more →
Mothers of Monsters
I am looking at an infant boy suspended in a jar of liquid. The preservative fluid has kept the boy’s body looking much as it did when he was born over two hundred years ago here in Amsterdam. The crown of his head protrudes upward several inches, giving his head an odd shape and swollen… Read more →
The Privilege of Despair
A preternatural calm settled over me on Saturday afternoon as I heard the news of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. I wasn’t reconciled to the outcome; my calm did not come from satisfaction. Instead, it came from the awful confirmation of a different kind — that the United States was still the white… Read more →
Exploring Pregnancy Loss: A Nursing Clio Series
As long-time readers of Nursing Clio, we are pleased to have the opportunity to guest edit this series, which brings together a variety of perspectives on the subject of pregnancy and baby loss and whose timing coincides with Baby Loss Awareness Week (October 9–15, 2018). We met working on a research project called “Death before… Read more →