Georgian London was the epicenter of urban pleasure culture. Harlots leveraged their assets, rakes indulged in licentious sex, and brothels, molly-houses, taverns and bawdy houses were scattered all over the city. Behind all this reckless abandon lay a milieu of Read more…
Today’s episode is part of our sex series 2.0 and a continuation of one of our earliest episodes, Selling Sex: 19th Century New York City Prostitution and Brothels. In that episode, Sarah and I discussed the vibrant sexual culture in Read more…
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 get away with it. But 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 Sold Sex in the Victorian 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 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…
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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