My earliest days in healthcare were at abortion clinics. First as a counselor and then as a nurse, I cared for hundreds of patients seeking abortion care. At clinics, I learned how to perform ultrasounds with the screen angled away from my patient; I learned how to tell which patients would be relieved in the… Read more →
Category: Culture
A Duet With History: Lizzo and James Madison’s Crystal Flute
At her Washington DC concert on September 27, 2022, musician and pop superstar Lizzo played a 200-year-old crystal flute that once belonged to James Madison onstage in front of an audience of thousands. While living in the White House, Madison continued to own and operate his Montpelier plantation in Virginia, where he enslaved over 300… Read more →
Nursing Clio Presents its Eighth Annual Best of List!
Favorite book: Eileen: By far, it was Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. Spooky, weird, and gorgeously written. I’m counting down the days until winter break so I can spend an afternoon re-reading it. Vicki: My reading habit has not been particularly good this year. One book I’m still thinking about, however, is Wayétu Moore’s She Would… 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 →
A Perspective on Patienthood
“The patient.” I hate that term. I hate to write about “the patient,” I hate to talk about “the patient.” But before I proceed, let me take a moment to locate myself: I am a medical social worker, a therapist, and a chronic illness patient with SLE (lupus). A significant part of my job is… Read more →
Why Are So Many Fellowships Residential?
It’s fellowship application season for academics. A time when we all beat the bushes of the internet, trying to find as many opportunities as possible to get time away from teaching to research or write. We pursue these opportunities diligently every year. We do so because we know our chances of actually receiving a fellowship… Read more →
¡Viva the Queer Zapata! The Sexual Politics of Defining Mexican Identity and Icons in Fabián Cháirez’s “La Revolución”
Fabián Cháirez’s painting “La Revolución,” part of the current exhibition, “Emiliano. Zapata después de Zapata” in Mexico City’s Bellas Artes Museum, has provoked controversy in Mexico. It portrays Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919), the archetypal, hyper-macho Mexican revolutionary, as a voluptuous, pouty-lipped pin-up girl wearing a pink sombrero, pistol-shaped stilettos, and a ribbon of green, white, and… Read more →
“Keepers of the Light”: A Musical History of the Boston Gay Men’s Chorus
Music forms a critical part of every documented human culture, providing a functional and emotional form of communication. Studies show that individuals who make or listen to music experience heightened levels of oxytocin and endorphins, resulting in decreased pain perception and relief from symptoms of depression. Within groups, creating music can sync heartbeats, leading to… Read more →
Historical Fanfiction as Affective History Making
I became a historian because of a television show. That is something I don’t often admit, but it’s true. I was home for Thanksgiving in 2009, nearly finished with my first semester as a journalism major, and I was miserable. To cope, I spent two days curled up on my parents’ couch watching the Band… Read more →
The Opioid Epidemic as Metaphor
I watched a lot of drug movies in high school. Maybe it was the clothes, the pulsing soundtracks, or how much I loved a voiceover. It also could have been the incredibly pretty people in these movies. Maybe it was because the Drug Movie as a format involves a type of fantastical world-building absent from… Read more →