'Evil Women': Myra Hindley on the Moors
Friday, 15 October 1965. Saddleworth Moor, near Oldham in Lancashire, England. On Boxing Day the previous year, Lesley Ann Downey...
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JOANNA BOURKE
Blogs
Here are my latest blogs! Enjoy.
Feb 523 min read
A (Very Short) History of Pain
Pain is a phantom, a spectre that haunts clinical encounters. Physical suffering is the chief symptom impelling people to seek medical...
50
Feb 518 min read
Murder, Women & Police Surgeons: A History
25 February 1946. ‘Poor Mary’ (a.k.a. Mary of Hendon) lies murdered in a field, her petticoats in disarray. Trainee detectives pile out...
10
Feb 517 min read
The Eye: A History
Cicero (106-43 B.C.): ‘Nature has given us eyes to declare our internal emotions’. Paulo Coelho (1947-): ‘The eyes are the mirror of the...
70
Feb 516 min read
The Stomach: A History
Punch divided the stomach into four ‘Faculties’. It called the first the ‘Sustaining Faculty’, which dealt with foods that were essential...
110
Feb 515 min read
Hair: A History
In June 2015, Rachel Dolezal was exposed for having lied about being of African American heritage. Dolezal was head of her local branch...
120
Feb 517 min read
Feet (and Feetishism!)
The foot. Where will feet take us today? In the middle of a pandemic [I first wrote this blog during lock-down!], most of us will be...
10
Feb 516 min read
Clitoris and Penis: A History
This blog comes with a warning: it is not for those delicate of hearing or squeamish of stomach because today I am writing about two sex...
40
Feb 517 min read
Breasts: Free the Nipple!
On 21 June 1986, nine American women removed their shirts in a park in Rochester, New York. They were protesting against a law which...
60
Feb 520 min read
Cruelty to Animals
Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s ‘Girl Making a Dog Dance on Her Bed’ was painted in the late 1760s. The painting is typical of his decadent...
20
Feb 521 min read
A (very short) Global History of Sexual Violence
This is a short piece from my book, Disgrace (Reaktion Books, 2022) Sexual violence: it is a difficult subject to talk about. There is...
70
Feb 511 min read
Training in Violence: Military Hazing
In 1975, Dennis Coates published a short book of poetry inspired by his time at West Point, the U.S. Military Academy. One poem –...
80
Feb 529 min read
State Torture
Just two months after the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington DC, Fox TV broadcast the first of their series ‘24’. The main...
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Feb 524 min read
Breast Cancer: Stories and Activism
In September 1971, Ebony magazine published an article that broke a major taboo: a survivor of breast cancer wrote candidly about her...
380
Feb 531 min read
AIDS: A History
Between 25 and 40 million people worldwide have died as a result of opportunistic infections arising from AIDS or Acquired...
30
Feb 528 min read
Tuberculosis: A History
What does tuberculosis look like? If we are thinking about the early-nineteenth century, we might imagine an emaciated, white, male...
70
Feb 523 min read
Sickle Cell Disease: A History
In April 1973, cinemas throughout America began screening a tearjerking love story, the plot of which revolved around sickle cell...
40
Feb 523 min read
Polio: A History (The Great Cat Massacre of 1916!)
The Great Cat Massacre in New York City began in July 1916. By the end of that month, 72,000 cats and around 8,000 dogs had been...
40
Feb 525 min read
Dementia: A History
A few weeks before writing this blog, I was launching a book that I had recently published. A former PhD student of mine and someone I...
10
Feb 53 min read
Athens: A Guide to the City
It is impossible not to be charmed by Athens. At night, bouzouki music wells up from dark basements; tables spill out of ouzeris, around...
70
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