Tag: TV

“Made in America”: O.J. Simpson, Race, and the Triumph of Toxic Masculinity

Black and white America could not have been further apart than on the morning of October 3, 1995 when a jury acquitted O.J. Simpson in the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. While most white Americans responded to the jury’s “not guilty” verdict with horror, many African-Americans rejoiced. Filmmaker Ezra Edelman seeks to… Read more →

Queen Bee

Samantha Bee has been America’s leading late-night feminist comic for over a decade. As the longest serving correspondent in the history of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Bee spent 12 years skewering politics and the media. When she was offered her own development deal with TBS to start a late-night comedy show, I’m sure… Read more →

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Feminism, Mental Health, and Musicals Meet on the Boob Tube

Yet another school year has come to a close. Perhaps you’ve just finished your comprehensive exams or defended a dissertation (if this is you, congrats!). Maybe your vacation approaches. Network TV shows are finishing up their seasons, and you’re looking for some new thing to watch while they’re on hiatus. It may be the perfect… Read more →

“She Did It to Herself”: Women’s Health on Television and Film

[Spoiler alert for PBS’s Mercy Street] Like just about every other Civil War historian out there, I’ve been following PBS’s new period drama, Mercy Street, pretty closely. The show, which aired its season finale on Sunday night, was innovative compared to other shows and movies on the war: it included plotlines about the health of… Read more →

Netflix’s Jessica Jones as a Story of Resiliency

Modern television is not known for its nuanced portrayal of rape and sexual violence. Much of the recent discussion about depictions of rape on television has focused on Game of Thrones, HBO’s massively popular television series based on a series of novels by George R.R. Martin. Game of Thrones has been criticized for its on-screen… Read more →

The Young and the Gangrenous

Bandages, Blood, and Bickering, Oh My! A Civil War is brewing within the walls of Mansion House Hospital, the setting of the new PBS drama Mercy Street. Taking a page from the highly regarded Downton Abbey, the producers have created a Civil War soap opera with a cavalcade of characters that spend most of their… Read more →

Nursing Clio’s Best of 2015!

With acknowledgments to our friends at Tropics of Meta who thought of the idea first, here are Nursing Clio’s “best of” the year. Favorite Book Lauren MacIvor Thompson I got nothin’. #dissertationproblems Lara Freidenfelds Shaping Our Selves: On Technology, Flourishing, and a Habit of Thinking, by Erik Parens. Parens is wise, humble, insightful, and pleasingly… Read more →

Call the Medical Missionary: Religion and Health Care in Twentieth-Century Britain

If you have ever seen the popular BBC/PBS television program Call the Midwife1 then you know that the central setting, Nonnatus House, is an Anglican religious order in the East End of London in the 1950s, offering midwifery and medical services to the community. Nonnatus House and Call the Midwife are semi-fictitious creations of author… Read more →