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 to pregnancy loss, motherhood, and 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 and controversy of the Kennewick 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 scroll down for the transcript. 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.
Victorian-era European imperialism was facilitated by the thousands of missionaries, businessmen, soldiers, and private police forces employed by the religious, economic, and military institutions of “civilized” Europe, but there were also individuals that facilitated this process, such as Henry Morton Read more…
Black cowboys made up at least one third of the cowhands that drove cattle along the long trails from Texas to mid-western and northern points in the middle of the 19th century. But you’d never know that from the images Read more…
Is space the new frontier? What are the links between the so-called “age of exploration,” and the conquering of the American West, and the United States space program? We will be covering those questions and others in today’s podcast, The Read more…
Fur trading and frontier life in French Canada. As frontiers typically are, the story of the French Canadian wilderness has been a gendered one since its earliest iterations. If it ever existed in reality, this straightforward, masculine escape was complicated by Read more…
Today we are discussing the bone-chilling fear that comes from knowing that all hope is gone, and your death – from the cold, or from a slow moving disease, or from starvation – is only a matter of time. We’re Read more…
The Lalaurie Mansion in New Orleans, Louisiana, is said to be one of the most haunted houses in the French Quarter. The extreme and shocking stories that are told about the Lalaurie house are egregiously exaggerated and overwhelmingly gloss over Read more…
Assistant Professor of History at Mercyhurst University. Researches sex, gender, and incarceration in modern Ireland. History side hustles: Nursing Clio, DIG, and the LGBTQ Council for the Pennsylvania History Association. Will tell you about maple creamees, just ask.
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).
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