Our current Christmas or holiday period, whether it be Kwanzaa or Hanukkah or Christmas or whatever… they are mostly happy celebrations that focus a lot around children. But these holiday celebrations are also happening during the deepest part of the winter months. The days are as short as they’ll be Read more…
Victorian Britons were obsessed with their homes. This was a period characterized by rapid industrialization, expansion of the availability of consumer goods, suburbanization, and the redefining of houses as domestic sanctuaries filled with the material evidence that a family was or was not “middle class.” Men and women no longer Read more…
Today we are discussing the ways the theoretical Little Ice Age impacted the people who lived through it. The study of past climates is highly politicized. Historical climatologists argue bitterly, writing scathing critiques of each other’s data and interpretations. Climate change deniers use historical climatology to argue that what the Read more…
There wasn’t a soul in London, much less the neighborhood of Smithfield market, who hadn’t heard of the Cock Lane ghost. In 1762, the narrow London street was crowded with throngs of onlookers and busy-bodies who wanted to know if the rumors were true. A young girl at 20 Cock Read more…
Photography has been a way for people to remember people, places, and events. We commemorate and document life through photographs, and have been doing so since the 19th century. But photography has also been used to document death. In this episode we are discussing Victorian postmortem photography. This has received Read more…
In early modern Europe—that’s about 1500 to 1800—warfare changed dramatically, mostly due to the rise of gunpowder weapons. The introduction of artillery and shoulder arms to early modern European warfare had immediate consequences such as changing fortress design, necessitating the switch from cavalry to infantry, and the building of large Read more…
What happens when Communist states want to control the reproductive functions of women’s bodies?