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A collage featuring pictures from the 1918 Flu Pandemic and the 1920s, including people wearing masks and nurses on one side and flappers on the other.

What Caused the Roaring Twenties? Not the End of a Pandemic (Probably)

As the U.S. anticipates a vaccinated summer, historians say measuring the impact of the 1918 influenza on the uproarious decade that followed is tricky.
A hand holding the hand of a baby doll.

The Strange Tradition of “Practice Babies” at 20th-Century Women’s Colleges

A photo archive shows college coeds vacuuming, preparing baby bottles, diapering babies, and generally practicing at motherhood.
Nellie Bly.

The Lost Legacy of the Girl Stunt Reporter

At the end of the nineteenth century, a wave of women rethought what journalism could say, sound like, and do. Why were they forgotten?
Nurses parading down a city street.

Right All the Way Through: Dr. Minerva Goodman and the Stockton Mask Debate

A 1918 debate offers a portrait of the challenges facing local officials during a health emergency.
Exhibit

Gender in America

An exploration of the gender norms that have shaped Americans' everyday lives and the varied efforts to push back against those social expectations.

Black and white photo of Barbara Bush, Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Nancy Reagan, in 1994.

What Do We Want in a First Lady?

Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan grappled with the contradictions of a role that is at once public and private, superficial and serious.
Linda Kay Klein as a teenager
partner

Shamed Over Sex, a Generation Confronts the Past

Former followers of an evangelical “purity” movement that promoted a strict view of abstinence are grappling with aftershocks.
A women with her hands on the car horn
partner

Her Crazy Driving is a Key Element of Cruella de Vil’s Evil. Here’s Why.

The history of the Crazy Woman Driver trope.
Image of plastic human figurine hunched over at a desk and computer.

How the Personal Computer Broke the Human Body

Decades before 'Zoom fatigue' broke our spirits, the so-called computer revolution brought with it a world of pain previously unknown to humankind.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.
Scratched photograph of Don Ward and Robert in the early seventies.

The Untold Story of Queer Foster Families

In the 1970s, social workers in several states placed queer teenagers with queer foster parents, in discrete acts of quiet radicalism.
Protesters holding signs in support of ending Britney Spear's conservatorship
partner

Britney Spears’s Plight Reflects a Long History of Men Controlling Women Stars

Since the 19th century, men have served as gatekeepers in the entertainment industry, controlling women’s careers.
illustration of a traditional housewife in the kitchen, baking for her husband

No, Rush Limbaugh Did Not Hijack Your Parents’ Christianity

White evangelicals have long been attracted to the conservative media's militant politics and regressive gender roles.

Why Martha Washington's Life Is So Elusive to Historians

A gown worn by the first First Lady reveals a dimension of her nature that few have been aware of.
Book cover of Feminine Mystique

The Powerful, Complicated Legacy of Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique'

The acclaimed reformer stoked the white, middle-class feminist movement and brought critical understanding to a “problem that had no name”
Union suit on clothesline

How 19th-Century Activists Ditched Corsets for One-Piece Long Underwear

Before it was embraced by men, the union suit, or 'emancipation suit,' was worn by women pushing for dress reform.
Three women hikers amid boulders on a mountainside.

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking

Gwenyth Loose on the women who defied all expectations.
Camp meeting

The Long Road to White Christians' Trumpism

Any effective soul-searching must take into account the history of white American Christian support for white supremacist power.
A series of photographs of Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell’s Youthful Artistry

A new release records the musician’s early metamorphosis—unmoored, broke, living for a time in an attic—when her lodestar was her big, strange, unwieldy talent.
Man with hamburger

Diners, Dudes, and Diets

How gender and power collide in food media and culture.
Women surrounding a Confederate flag.

The Guerrilla Household of Lizzie and William Gregg

White women were as married to the war as their Confederate menfolk.
A collage graphic featuring men gazing at women as they walk by.

How the 'Girl Watching' Fad of the 1960s Taught Men to Harass Women

In name, 'girl watching' is long gone. In practice, the trend lives on.
Black women, oil painting

Rebellious History

Saidiya Hartman’s "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments" is a strike against the archives’ silence regarding the lives of Black women in the shadow of slavery.
Cartoon that shows a man struggling to shake a woman's hand because of her wide skirt.

Lampooning Political Women

For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images.

Hygeia: Women in the Cemetery Landscape

The Mourning Woman emerged during a revival of classical symbolism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gravestone iconography.
Mother with a laptop, surrounded by noisy children.
partner

Suffrage Movement Convinced Women They Could ‘Have it All’

More than a century later, they’re still paying the price.

How Boomers Changed American Family Life (By Getting Divorced)

Jill Filipovic on the generation that changed everything.

The Class of RBG

The remarkable stories of the nine other women in the Harvard Law class of ’59—as told by them, their families, and a SCOTUS justice who remembers them all.

A Different Kind of Expert

An 1813 correspondence demonstrates that medical expertise in early America was not limited to men or physicians.

Makers of Living, Breathing History: The Material Culture of Homemade Facemasks

Masks have a history associated with disease, status, gender norms, and more.

George Washington Would Have So Worn a Mask

The father of the country was a team player who had no interest in displays of hyper-masculinity.

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