By Alina Scott 2020 is a significant moment in the history of the United States. As some locations begin the process of opening up in the midst of the Covid19 pandemic, the country is now collectively mourning and joining in protests against police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd at the […]
Gender/Sexuality
The Odds are Stacked Against Us: Oral Histories of Black Healthcare in the U.S.
There are roughly one million practicing physicians in the US and less than 6 percent of those physicians are African-American.[5] Meaning that for the 44 million black residents of the U.S., there are about 60,000 black practicing physicians. That is one black doctor for every 700 black patients. This is not to say that only African-American physicians can treat African-American patients, but distrust in healthcare institutions could potentially be alleviated by having providers be of the same ethnicity as the patient…One way to understand the causes of racial health disparities, and the role of women in health care, inside and outside of black churches, is through oral histories, such as the interviews I conducted among lower-income women from a small congregation in southeast Texas.
Secrets of the Crypt
by Carolyn Pouncy Everyone loves to be proven right, but novelists don’t often expect it—especially five hundred years after the period where their books are set. After all, that’s half the fun of writing and reading fiction: filling in the gaps left by the historical record. So to have a set of novels that explore […]
Confucian Patriarchy and the Allure of Communism in China
By Alan Roberts Despite a growing tolerance for socialism, “communism” is still a dirty word for most Americans. Many point to Stalin’s Gulag, the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge, and the repressive Kim dynasty in Korea as they preface the question how could communism ever appeal to anyone? For each country, there are myriad […]
The Politics of a Handkerchief: Personal Thoughts on the Motif of Female Activism in Argentina
By Paula O’Donnell Windswept litter and flaming logs on asphalt. Backlit figures swaying to handmade percussive instruments and bongos. High school seniors from Colegio Nacional huddled for warmth on the sidewalk, resting foreheads on shoulders for brief shut eye. A neighboring group of teens hoisted Argentine flags that read Movimiento Estudiantil Liberación. They danced and […]
La Mujer Unidad: Cynthia Orozco (UT History Honors Graduate ‘80)
By Nikki Lopez “I think I drew it in my apartment, I drew a lot of posters for organizations from Austin to San Marcos,” Cynthia Orozco answered when I asked about the origins of the poster. Orozco further explained to me that feminist consciousness groups like this one were popular in the late 1970s. “It […]
Medieval Facial Hair in Major League Baseball
by Guy Raffa What is it with baseball players and whiskers? The 2013 Red Sox perfected the art of beard-bonding on the way to their third World Series championship in ten years. Boston players and their fans rallied around what Christopher Oldstone-Moore calls the “quest beard” in his history of facial hair, Of Beards and […]
Cynthia Attaquin and a Wampanoag Network of Petitioners
Change.org, Ipetition, petitiononline — today, the digital marketplace has spurred the easy distribution of petitions. While they are significant, modern petitioning campaigns offer a different contribution to public discourse than their nineteenth-century counterparts. For women, people of color, and others who had little access to political movers and shakers, petitioning placed them a signature and […]
Missing Signatures: The Archives at First Glance
by Alina Scott On February 21, 1831, a petition containing the signatures of over 800 Connecticut residents was submitted to the United States Congress on behalf of the indigenous population in the South who were facing relocation. The petition acknowledged Native peoples as the “original proprietors of the soil” and its authors claimed that to […]
Historians on Marriage and Sexuality in the United States
by Alexander Taft In June 2015, by a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court of the United States resolved decades of debate by declaring marriage a fundamental right regardless of sexual orientation. The Obergefell v. Hodges decision changed the landscape of American marriage law, but what was this landscape in the first place? […]