In Surgery and Salvation, O’Brien traces the history of reproductive injustice in Mexico, taking a longue durée approach extending from the late colonial period through post-revolutionary state formation. She focuses on reproductive surgeries and how women’s bodies—particularly those of poor and Indigenous women—became laboratories for medical experimentation, religious morality, and eugenic population control. Much historical scholarship on reproductive control […]
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Asia and the Middle East
The Forgotten Spanish-Cuban Contribution to American Independence: Francisco de Saavedra and the Silver of Havana
When British forces surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, few would have imagined that the decisive blow had been financed not from Paris or Philadelphia, but from Havana. Behind this unexpected twist stood Francisco de Saavedra, a Spanish official whose name is absent from most American textbooks but whose actions helped change the course of the […]
