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I never set out to write a book reinterpreting the financial, social, and political relationship between the American railroad and telegraph industries in the nineteenth century. I have always had an interest in the history of communication and, to a lesser...

The two of us are sisters – Margaret is a historian, Wanda a gynecologist – and we have been writing about the history of infertility, reproductive sexuality, and reproductive medicine for close to three decades now. In our new book, The Pursuit of Parenthood...

When we think about disparities in health status, it is common to view these inequities in terms of race. For example, we often look at infant mortality as an issue of race. In 2016, for every 1,000 babies born to black mothers in the United States, 11.4 died...

I have always been fascinated by politics in democratic societies both ancient and modern. The focus of my research and teaching during the past 36 years, though, has been the Roman Republic (509-31B.C.), specifically the last century of the republic. This was...

The US Air Guitar Nationals take place this week in Nashville. Last year, Byrd McDaniel published an essay in American Quarterly looking at the history around these competitions. He shared some insights with us for this special video.

Photo credit: homewoodphoto.jhu.edu Johns Hopkins and the greater academic community lost a brilliant mind earlier this month when Richard Macksey died. Professor Macksey was an author and journal editor, long-time friend of the Press, and permanent fixture of...

This is a story about monsters, but not the kind you’re thinking of. Most real monsters do not have leathery wings or claws. They do not fit that stereotype. This is only partly a story of the hoary past. Though it begins in the late 1600s, it resonates with...

A recent issue of Diacritics took a look at Jonathan Culler's 2015 book Theory of the Lyric, which examined the Western lyric tradition. Elizabeth S. Anker, a colleague of Culler's at Cornell University, guest edited the issue, which grew out of the 2017...

What made you want to write Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800? I wanted to combat two assumptions: one, that sailors were not capable of doing mathematics, and two, that math textbooks are not interesting! Before becoming a historian, I...

The relationship between American children and television had has many twists and turns. The Spring issue of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth features an essay by Colin Ackerman, a Research Associate for the Collaborative for Academic, Social...