The intersection of gender identity, faith, and cultural heritage is a complex and often fraught one, particularly for trans individuals living in the American South. As a society and a culture, it’s important that we explore the ways trans people are often excluded from traditional religious spaces, and how this exclusion can lead to a… Read more →
Category: Activism
Walls of Moms: Maternal Bodies and Public Space in Portland and Argentina
On July 18, 2020 a group of mothers gathered on the streets of Portland. These women, the majority of whom were white, stood together as a living barrier between BLM protestors and armed federal agents. Wearing yellow and holding sunflowers, the women represented a particular vision of white, middle-class, US motherhood. Some of these women… Read more →
Why I Say “Black Lives Matter”
Two paragraphs in my forthcoming book, Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution, continue to haunt me. The paragraphs reference the 1770 protests in New Bern, North Carolina. Like their seventeenth-century English ancestors, these protestors believed that the people had a duty to “regulate” the government, and particularly to step in when… Read more →
Sunday Mourning Medicine
Please donate to the following organizations, if you can: Unicorn Riot The Bail Project Reclaim the Block Black Lives Matter Black Visions Collective Anti-Police Terror Project. Minnesota Freedom Fund National Bailout (#FreeBlackMamas) Official George Floyd Memorial Fund Communities United Against Police Brutality
Glitter Conservators: Thinking Conservation through Feminism
A golden sculpture of a winged woman holding a laurel wreath with her right arm and a broken chain with the other rises stoically above Mexico City. She is standing on her toes, bare chested, on a stone column erected over a base with five male figures known as the “Apotheosis to the Father of… Read more →
Retirement Life: Escorting Clinic Patients
When I officially retired from my academic position (I’m teaching one last semester in the fall as a phased retiree) I calculated all the time I spent in meetings at work and transferred those hours over to escorting patients at an abortion clinic. I am lucky to be able to retire and do this, and… Read more →
Disability Identity and the Culture of Veteran Athletics in Modern America
In May 2020, Prince Harry will inaugurate the fifth Invictus Games in The Hague, Netherlands. An international sporting event for wounded, disabled, and sick veterans of modern war that began in 2014, the Invictus Games will bring together five hundred athletes from over a dozen countries competing in events like wheelchair basketball, cycling, and archery…. Read more →
The Anti-Abortion Politics of White Women
Last month, the Alabama State Senate passed a piece of legislation effectively banning abortion in the state of Alabama. House Bill 314, which prohibits abortion even in cases of rape and incest, comes on the heels of Georgia House Bill 481, which prohibits abortions in cases where a fetal heartbeat is detectable—six weeks into a… Read more →
This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long after birth deserved to be treated in the womb ‘with extraordinary pharmacological, surgical and other interventions.’” He intimated that parents who did not use extraordinary measures were not caring for their children, saying that “Taking… Read more →
Museum Educators Unite: Unionizing the Lower East Side Tenement Museum
On April 15th, 2019, a group of workers in the Lower East Side Tenement Museum’s departments of Education, Visitor Services, Retail, and Advance Sales voted 72–3 to join United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110, joining a growing movement of museum professionals forming unions in New York City. The Tenement Museum is a unique institution. Housed… Read more →