In the age of #MeToo, rape and sexual assault have been consistently in the news. Debates abound about what counts as rape, whose testimony we should believe, and too often, men with power and privilege Read more…
Have you been tested? Averill and Elizabeth take a look at the British imperial policy of blaming–and locking up–women for outbreaks of syphilis. Transcript for Locked Up and Poxxed: THE Venereal Disease and Women who Read more…
Shannon Withycombe’s Lost: Miscarriage in Nineteenth-Century America puts miscarriage at the center of the study of nineteenth-century science, medicine, and women’s experience with their reproductive bodies. You may be surprised by the range of responses Read more…
In 1996, two college students stumbled upon some skeletal remains in the Columbia River in Washington. The body, it turns out, was the oldest ever found in North America. In order to understand the story Read more…
From whence came the poxiest of poxes? Averill and Marissa dive into the debates surrounding the origin of syphilis, with historians, paleobiologists, forensic anthropologists, and Shakespeare all weighing in. Listen, download, watch on YouTube, or Read more…
Conventional narratives tell us that medieval lepers were pariahs who lived out their days as rejected invalids, rotting away in decrepit asylums, quarantined from society. Some of this is true. The disease became so common in Europe, however, that medieval society was compelled to adapt to the presence of the chronically ill.
Clinical Assistant Professor of History for the University at Buffalo. Forthcoming book on disabled Civil War veterans. Administrative Assistant for UB History Department, editor at Nursing Clio. Has participated in Civil War reenactments, and still has the petticoats to prove it.
Independent information professional and PhD candidate in History. Studies lactating women for hire in the Atlantic world during the Revolutionary era. Has won lots of really cool grants and fellowships, 2015 article on wet-nursing ads in the Journal of Family History. Unhealthy obsession with true crime podcasts.
PhD candidate in History writing about Progressive Era women and the formation of the welfare state in the US. 2017-18 UB Gender Institute Dissertation Fellow, 2018-2019 Humanities Institute fellow. Forthcoming article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Might be able to deadlift you. Texas native who married her tattoo artist (not just for the free tattoos).
