Mastectomy, Fear, the Body: A History
In August 1812, eminent novelist Frances Burney described with alarming precision her mounting sense of terror as she prepared to undergo...
top of page
JOANNA BOURKE
Blogs
Here are my latest blogs! Enjoy.
Feb 621 min read
Cruelty: Pain, War, Sexual Abuse
The three sites of cruelty I will explore are (firstly) hierarchies of sentience, (secondly) wartime wounding, and (thirdly) sexual...
90
Feb 66 min read
Marianne Elliott: Inspirations Series
Marianne Elliott is one of the greatest living historians of Ireland, with books that have changed the way we think about revolution and...
20
Feb 65 min read
Helena Kennedy: Inspirations Series
Kennedy’s great passion is for law. She was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn in 1972. At the age of only 24 years, just out of pupillage,...
80
Feb 65 min read
Judith Butler: Inspirations Series
Judith Pamela Butler is the most widely read philosopher on the planet and the most influential voice in contemporary gender theory....
150
Feb 66 min read
Jude Kelly: Inspirations Series
Jude Kelly is known to millions of people around the world. She is a theatre director, with more than 100 productions to her name....
70
Feb 65 min read
Marai Larasi: Inspirations Series
‘If we are to end violence against women and girls, we need to create seismic shifts across our social norms’. So says Marai Larasi,...
30
Feb 614 min read
Mechanics' Institutes: What? Why? Where?
When Birkbeck was established in 1823, it was called the London Mechanics’ Institution. It was one of the first ‘mechanics’ institutes’...
50
Feb 53 min read
Imkaan, Intersectionality, and Sexual Violence
On 4 March 2020, the Black feminist organisation Imkaan launched a report in the Houses of Parliament on sexual violence against...
30
Feb 56 min read
Medical Professionals and Sexual Violence
On 12 June 1993, the editors of the British Medical Journal published an account by a male doctor of being sexually assaulted by another...
20
Feb 54 min read
Domestic Violence and Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic is a stark reminder of human vulnerability. To be vulnerable (from the Latin ‘vulnus’, meaning ‘wound’) is to be...
00
Feb 52 min read
Domestic Violence, Firearms, and Covid-19
Covid-19 exposed girls, women, and other minoritised groups to increased domestic violence. As has happened throughout the world, calls...
70
Feb 52 min read
Rape Kits and the 'Technoscientific Witness of Rape'
Andrea Quinlan’s 2017 book The Technoscientific Witness of Rape: Contentious Histories of Law, Feminism, and Forensic Science (University...
20
Feb 54 min read
'Forgetting Rape': Proprandolo
What if nurses in A&E wards or staff at rape crisis centres could give rape victims a drug that would make them feel emotionally composed...
40
Feb 54 min read
Domestic Violence During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic
In 1918-19, the world was in the midst of a global influenza pandemic, that killed 50 million people (more than the 1914-18 war). When...
50
Feb 516 min read
'Evil Women': Eve's Legacies
Evil women. This is the first of a series of blogs about evil women, so, before turning to Eve’s evil legacies, I want to draw attention...
250
Feb 517 min read
'Evil Women': Snow White and the Witch
Each generation invents evil. And evil women have incited our imaginations since Eve first plucked that apple. One of my favourites evil...
70
Feb 522 min read
'Evil Women': Amelia Dyer and Killing Babies
Amelia Dyer was a serial killer of babies and infants. She was the most prolific mass murderer (at least on British soil) in modern...
100
Feb 517 min read
'Evil Women': Mata Hari and the Femme Fatales
‘Sharing a Birthday with Mata Hari’ is a poem by Susan Gubernat: She refused the blindfold, faced twelve raised guns, Men’s erections so...
40
Feb 516 min read
'Evil Women': Nurse Ratched
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic,...
40
bottom of page