In my book, Measuring Difference, numbering normal: setting the standards for disability in the interwar period, I show how specific conceptions of normalcy and disability emerged in the interwar period. The First World War necessitated new ways of thinking about…
Category: Blog and News
News items of interest to WHN Members
Widows: Poverty, Power and Politics by Professor Maggie Andrews and Dr Janis Lomas
Our interest in widows was sparked when writing about the British women’s suffrage movement; we noticed all three leaders of the major suffrage organisations were widows. Was this, we wondered, something of a coincidence, or a more complex and common…
Challenging the Gender Binary of War: Munitions and Disability During the Second World War By Amy Dale
The grand narrative of the Second World War as the ‘People’s War’ remains a dominant theme in British cultural memory. Within that narrative, warfare and traditional ideas about masculinity are inextricably linked. Courage, valour and aggression are all worlds associated…
Nursing The Troubles by Megan Kelly
In 2019 the BBC released a documentary[1] which showcased interviews with nurses that had worked during ‘The Troubles.’ Compelling and poignant, one of the exceptional features of the documentary was just how willing and keen nurses were to share their…
Case Studies in Blame: Victorian Physicians, Working-Class Women and Tuberculosis in Scottish Charity Hospitals by Amy W. Farnbach
“Uncleanliness of the mind and body act and react,” wrote the Edinburgh-trained physician J. Milner Fothergill in his 1874 Maintenance of Health, “and perfect health of one is incompatible with an unhealthy state of the other.” The Victorian middle classes…
Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton by Professor Lydia R. Hamessley
In mid-August 2020, Dolly Parton was in the news. This is not unusual, but the headlines were a bit bigger this time because, unlike her usual practice, Dolly had made a political statement. In a prominent interview for Billboard,[1] she…
Born to Dance: Mary Hinkson and the Martha Graham Dance Company by Dr Victoria Phillips
“Race… It is an area of enormous sensitivity in this country. You know. Oh God, the things I listen to on public radio, I can’t believe it. But, you know, the part that’s unpleasant about that is: why do you…
Lips that Touch Liquor: Fighting for the Face of Female Temperance by Dr Gemma Outen
Lips that Touch Liquor: Fighting for the Face of Female Temperance, forthcoming with the Royal Historical Society / University of London Press (2021), will be the first full-length examination of the female temperance movement. Women played a significant part in…
Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity by Dr. Cat M. Ariail
Over the course of two days in July of 1962, more than 150,000 people packed Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, California for the fourth edition of the United States-Soviet Union dual track and field meet, an event organized to encourage…