An ode to the blue blouse with white flowers

It’s 11pm on a Saturday, and I’m doing my laundry. Snippets of the 90s remake of The Little Rascals waft in from the living room, followed by Alex’s giggles. He had grabbed the DVD at a thrift store earlier, excited by the idea of revisiting something he hadn’t experienced since childhood. I smile as I … More An ode to the blue blouse with white flowers

Advertisement

I’m falling in love with James Baldwin, and it’s pissing me off.

I can’t remember where I first learned anything about this man, or why I decided to start with Notes of a Native Son. I do remember the muggy, summer evening that I, on a bit of a whim, drove straight to one of my favorite bookstores after getting off work. I also purchased Audre Lorde’s … More I’m falling in love with James Baldwin, and it’s pissing me off.

Why I chose the Slow Game, and how that’s working out for me

I should really write blog posts more than once a year. I’ll put that on my ever-expanding list of goals for 2020. This is me checking in after 18 months or so in corporate America. What a strange, challenging, fascinating journey it’s been. I decided to take the plunge after hanging out around the office … More Why I chose the Slow Game, and how that’s working out for me

The Transition

I graduated from a History of Science program in May of 2018 and have been serving as an intern in the human resources department of a relatively large and well-known industrial construction company. Talk about contrast. I have been forced through exposure and an increasingly intense desire to get out of my parents’ house to … More The Transition

Science and the Construction of Health in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, 1879-1906

It is done, and it is online for anyone to read! The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a crisis in therapeutics as scientific developments overturned the theoretical underpinnings of humoral medicine, leaving room for lively and pluralistic discourses of health and healing. This thesis examines the controversies surrounding therapeutics in late nineteenth-century America through … More Science and the Construction of Health in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, 1879-1906

Thesis Revisions: Contextualization in AR History

Howard C. Westwood, “The Federals’ Cold Shoulder to Arkansas’ Powell Clayton,” Civil War History 26, no. 3 (1980): 240-255. Here Westwood tells the story of Reconstruction after Arkansas was reintegrated into the Union and Federal forces were removed. Ku Klux Klan violence was rampant, and the first Republican governor Powell Clayton was forced by a lack of … More Thesis Revisions: Contextualization in AR History

The Nervous Origins of the American Western

Barbara Will, “The Nervous Origins of the American Western,” American Literature 20, no. 2 (1998): 293-316. Will looks at the role that neurasthenia played in the development of the idea of the American West, specifically in its literary iteration. Neurasthenia, as defined by George Beard and Silas Mitchell, was a disease brought on (specifically in men) by … More The Nervous Origins of the American Western