How did US women have abortions when it was illegal? Rosa Campbell explores an archive of US women's testimonies of abortions across borders, in Japan, Puerto Rico and Mexico, with resonances for today.
Can medical institutions participate in colonial violence? Allison McKibban argues the involuntary sterilization of tens of thousands of Native American women in the 1970s must be rehistoricised as part of the U.S. government’s broader…
In the US, abortion rights are under threat. But, as Kelly O'Donnell and Lauren MacIvor Thompson explore, if Roe is lost, we must go back to the beginning, turning to history and what it can reveal about potential paths forward.
This World AIDS Day, Clifford McManus discusses the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt as a radical object of protest and activism, and a symbol of love and remembrance.
In the early years of the National Health Service, the medical romance novels published by Mills & Boon became a unlikely voice for progressive change in the provision of health care and the professional advancement of women. Agnes…
To what extent can today's diagnoses of postpartum psychosis illuminate past women's experiences of childbirth and "madness"? Philippa Carter explores that question in this companion piece to her article in History Workshop Journal 91.
What does the vaginal speculum have to do with power? How does the history of this instrument help us to understand how bodies have been understood, policed, and governed? Can this object be reclaimed?
Lisa Godson explores.
A look at the lives of early women physicians in India reveals the impact of social reform in on health outcomes. Dr. Krishnabai Kelavkar, who transformed maternal and infant health in the state of Kolhapur, is such a trailblazing woman, as…
With Italy on the frontline of Europe's Coronavirus outbreak, Rosa Salzberg examines how Renaissance Venice established world-leading measures to combat the plague, strategies we are still relying on today.
Bruce Campbell argues that interactions between climate and disease during the fourteenth-century Black Death can inform insights into Covid-19 and alter historians' understanding of the nature of historical change.
How can the history of the response to the 2009-10 swine flu epidemic illuminate the British government's response to the COVID crisis? Virginia Berridge explores.
How did behaviour change become an integral part of public health strategies in the twentieth century? And what insights can this history offer in tackling the unique challenge of Covid-19?
Call for Papers: Environmental History Workshop 2019 on 'Flows' will take place at Northumbria University on 13 September 2019. Deadline for paper proposals 18 March.
How did an American comic book publisher become a crusader in the fight against HIV/AIDS? Frances Reed unearths the forgotten story of Eclipse Enterprises and its collectable AIDS trading cards, currently on display at the Royal College of…
