Childbirth is such a routine part of life that in some ways it can become invisible, especially historically. History, people often assume, is made up of major events, political elections, wars, etc. – not routine biological processes. But for something so invisible, it has made up a significant portion of Read more…
Symphysiotomy. Probably not a word you’ve heard before – and if you have, I’m sorry? Symphysiotomy is an obstetric procedure in which a person’s pubic symphysis cartilage is cut to widen the pelvis for childbirth. Yes. Gross. I know. For most of the 19th century, symphysiotomy was a new solution Read more…
Today we’re going to discuss alcohol consumption in early America. Alcohol was very important to early Americans and it flowed freely through the colonies. Adults and children alike drank alcoholic beverages for a variety of reasons. One being that it was one of the few things that were safe to Read more…
Dueling seems crazy to us today. Two men take ten paces, turn to face each other, and stand still while they shoot to kill, all the while following strict rules. But while it’s easy to think of duels as simply evidence of a more violent age, dueling and other similar Read more…
Today we delve into the new book, Speaking with the Dead in Early America, by historian and friend-of-the-pod Erik Seeman, where he explores the history of Protestant communication with the dead in the three centuries before the advent of Spiritualism. Scroll down for a full transcript. Related Posts Suit Up: Class, Read more…
Join us as we highlight the religious underpinnings of the women’s reform movement of the late nineteenth century in America, with particular emphasis on the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the quite radical Protestant Christianity that many white and Black women in the nineteenth century utilized to push for women’s Read more…
In the 1880s, when the buffalo were all but extinct, droughts and over-grazing meant famines, and the promised rations from the government shrank, a new religion spread rapidly through the tribes of the Great Basin and Plains west. It was called the Ghost Dance religion, preached by the Paiute prophet Read more…
They stoked rebellion in enslaved Africans in Suriname, they possessed an unhealthy obsession with blood, gore, and the genitals of Jesus Christ, they allowed their women to preach (against the Pauline prescriptions) and they indulged in all kinds of wicked behavior. Worst of all, to their many enemies, people liked Read more…
Like all things, “fatherhood” has a history. From the enslaved men of the Anglo-American Atlantic to the middling sort to working class daddies and “their chairs,” ideas about fatherhood across socio-economic status in the nineteenth century shared one common trope: fathers were supposed to be providers. This wasn’t always the Read more…
In 1864, young Daniel Folsom was institutionalized for something that we might consider PTSD. In a letter home to his sister, he promised her, “I shall try and be a man.” Why was Daniel so concerned with his manhood? What did it mean to be a man during the Civil Read more…