Before protease inhibitors radically improved the lives of many people living with HIV in the mid-1990s, numerous sitcoms from Mr. Belvedere in 1986 to Grace Under Fire in 1996 fought ignorance and prejudice with more care and passion than many who had been elected to public office. For example, in 2018 on Nursing Clio, Claire… Read more →
Tag: television
The History of Medicine on TV: A Conversation with Diagnosing History editors Katherine Byrne, Julie Anne Taddeo, and James Leggott
With the second season of Bridgerton as one of the most-watched shows on Netflix so far this year, it’s clear that period dramas continue to be hugely popular. Amidst the fancy costumes and beautiful sets, one of the most common themes in a period drama is health and medicine. Medical plots and subplots provide drama,… Read more →
Making Maternal Labor Visible
Popular culture tells us many things about Americans. We watch stories of made-up families and binge shows that fictionalize real-life situations. We know that television shows do not depict the realities of our lives; onscreen, we see the best edits, the reflection of life with the challenges often glossed over or removed. Television shows have… Read more →
Jim Bob’s Humbug: Freaks, Fitter Families, and 19 Kids and Counting
On May 25, 2022, Joshua Duggar (34) was sentenced to 151 months in federal prison and 20 years’ probation after being found guilty at the end of last year on two counts of receiving and possessing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM). The scion of America’s most famous “Quiverfull” family, Josh Duggar first came to the… Read more →
Diversity in Children’s TV for Better Children’s Mental Health
I have a vivid memory of being in kindergarten and being called Dora, the name of the titular character from the children’s show Dora the Explorer. I was a chubby Mexican child, and those comparisons increased when I cut my hair to shoulder length, which only made me look even more like her. I couldn’t tell… Read more →
Run Away with Us to Virgin River. It’s Harmless Enough.
This essay contains spoilers for Virgin River. Have you ever wanted to run away from your life and go to a place where no one knows you? You could leave the big city for a small town. Change your fast-paced job for a simpler one. Find a nice, hot guy who wants to drive you… Read more →
Narrative Privilege and the Power of Pose
This post contains spoilers for the full series of Pose, including the series finale. Dorian Corey began her career as a dancer in the Pearl Box Revue sometime in the 1960s. By the late 1970s, she was the mother of the House of Corey, strutting the runway in underground drag balls and performing in shows… Read more →
Justice and Agency: Why Women Love True Crime
When I was young, I was obsessed with Unsolved Mysteries. While not typically a “go-to” show for an eight-year-old, my love of the program was unsurprising to my parents. I voraciously read every single Nancy Drew novel, regularly solved Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, and loved watching Father Dowling Mysteries and PBS’s Mystery! with my grandmother. But… Read more →
Historian Witches and Scientist Vampires: Can We Be Deborah Harkness When We Grow Up?
Historian-witches, vampire-scientists, and a world where you can get a tenure-track job at an Ivy and fancy fellowships at Oxford just because you work hard and have great hair? You guessed it: we’re talking A Discovery of Witches. Please excuse our numerous exclamation points! A Discovery of Witches is the first book in Deb Harkness’s… Read more →
At the Crossroads of Comfort TV and Comfort Food
When I started my PhD, a kind mentor advised me to cope with graduate school’s stresses by eating chocolate and watching lots of TV. I received the same guidance when starting a tenure track position, though the recommendation escalated to watching TV in a (forgivable and deserved) prostrate position. This is survival advice for everyone,… Read more →