Dig: A History Podcast

Commemorative Sex Series: Episode 3 of 4. When and where public baths have been popular, they’ve meant different things to different cultures. They might be sites for socializing, religious purification, spiritual/bodily cleanliness, relaxation/pampering, public health/hygiene, homosocialiality, and, of course, sex, or some combination of those things. At the start of the twentieth century, single-gender communal bathhouses were central to emerging gay communities all over North America and Europe. At the end of the century, those sites of community formation were associated with the rapid and devastating spread of HIV/AIDS. In 1984, the city of San Francisco ordered the closure of bathhouses, insisting that often anonymous and unsafe sex was at the heart of the bathhouse. But the closure of the gay bathhouses in AIDS-era America echoes the closure and backlash against queer bathhouse spaces in places like early twentieth-century Russia and Mexico. The bathhouse was a contested space because of its same-sex sexual activity, with or without the threat of the looming pandemic. For a complete transcript and bibliography, visit digpodcast.orgSelected BibliographyAllab Berube, My Desire for History ,(University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Ed. by Chris Bull, While the World Sleeps: Writing from the First Twenty Years of the Global AIDS Plague (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003). Dan Healy, Russian Homophobia: From Stalin to Sochi, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).Victor M. Macias-Gonzalez, Masculinity and Sexuality in Modern Mexico, (University of New Mexicao, 2012).Ethan Pollock, Without the Banya we Would Perish, (Oxford University Press, 2019).Philip Tiemeyer, Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants (University of California Press, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Commemorative Sex Series: Episode 2 of 4. Today’s show is focused on the Hispanic concept of recogida and the accompanying system called recogimiento. Roughly translated into English, recogida means “pick up,” or “capture” while the word recogimiento means “recollection,” “seclusion” or “withdrawal” but, as many scholars before us have noted, these Spanish words resist translation. To early modern Spanish-speakers, they evoked a division in the worlds of the sacred and the worldly. To modern Spanish-speakers, they evoke social concepts related to honor and shame. We do know that recogimiento first came into use on the Iberian peninsula by Franciscans and Catholic mystics. Though this usage continued, the term also came to represent a system of virtue for women, one that revolved around sexual purity, honor, and physical enclosure. Eventually, this tradition-turned-social norm evolved into an institution for women with many purposes. Join us as we uncover the long and winding history of recogimiento in colonial Latin America. Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Commemorative Sex Series: Episode 1 of 4. It's our 100th EPISODE!!! Welcome to the start of another glorious SEX series. This episode on the Honeymoon in Niagara Falls is our 100th episode, and to commemorate the occasion, we're returning to one of our favorite Series themes: Sex. Thank you for supporting us, for joining us on this journey, and for listening!Niagara Falls was once known as the Honeymoon Capital of the World. Join us as we explore this unique phenomenon. Everything has a history, even honeymoons.BibliographyCott, Nancy. Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.Breines, Wini. “The ‘Other’ Fifties: Beats and Bad Girls,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960. Ed. Joann Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.Dubinsky, Karen. The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999.Howells, William Dean. Their Wedding Journey. Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1883.Johnson, Miriam M. Strong Mothers, Weak Wives: The Search for Gender Equality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.Johnson, Paul. Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.Katz, Jonathan. The Invention of Heterosexuality. New York: Dutton Publishing, 1995.McKinsey, Elizabeth. Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a special episode, a recording of a live Anniversary episode in which we answer questions from listeners. We hope you enjoy! Thank you for listening to and supporting our show, and to those who submitted questions and joined us for the live episode, a special thanks to you all! <3Next week (May 10) we will be releasing our 100th episode as Dig, kicking off a Sex series like no other. Cheers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Violence Series #4 of 4. Though they’re rarely at the fore of the story, the women of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising were essential to the rebellion. They carried messages and supplies, provided cover fire in battles, and served on the front lines. In this episode Averill and Sarah dive into the historical treatment of the women of the Easter Rising, and the failure of the Free State after Ireland gained its independence to adequately honor the sacrifice of those women. Get the transcript and Further Reading recommendations at digpodcast.orgBibliographyMary McAuliffe and Liz Gillis, Richmond Barracks 1916: we were there: 77 women of the Easter Rising, (Dublin City Council, 2016).Edited by Ruán O'Donnell, Mícheál Ó hAodha, Voices from the Easter Rising, (Merrion Press, 2016)Richard Grayson, Dublin's Great Wars : The First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution, (Cambridge University Press; 2018)Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, “Schooling the National Orphans: The Education of the Children of the Easter Rising Leaders,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 2016, Vol.9(2), pp.261-276Marian Eide, “Maeve’s Legacy: Constance Markievicz, Eva Gore-Booth, and the Easter Rising,” Éire-Ireland, 2016, Vol.51(3), pp.80-103Fearghal McGarry, The rising : Ireland--Easter 1916, (Oxford University Press, 2010).Constance Gore Booth Markievicz, Prison Letters of Countess Markievicz (Constance Gore-Booth), Also Poems and Articles Relating to Easter Week by Eva Gore Booth and a Biographical Sketch by Esther Roper, with a Preface by President de Valera, (Longmanns, Green, 1934)Margaret Skinnider, Doing my Bit for Ireland: A first-hand account of the Easter Rising, (Luath Press Ltd, 2017)Margaret Ward, Unmanageable revolutionaries: women and Irish Nationalism, (Pluto Press, 1995)Helen McBride, “Eirebrushed: Erasing Women from Irish History,” Nursing ClioMaria Luddy, “Women and the COntagious Diseases Acts, 1864-1886,” History Ireland (Spring 1993) Brittany Columbus, “Bean na h-Éireann: Feminism and Nationalism in an Irish Journal, 1908-1911,” Voces Novae, vol. 1, iss. 2, (2018)Cal McCarthy, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Revolution, (Cork, Ireland: Collins Press, 2007)Cumann na mBan Archives Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Violence Series. Episode #3 of 4. This week we're delving into penal violence in early modern Europe. For most people, we suspect, their familiarity with torture, corporal punishment, and execution for capital crime is confined to some gnarly anecdotes, perhaps a few graphic movie scenes, a little Monty Python, and, if you’re cool like us, your high school history project about medieval torture devices. But everything has a history and those things barely scratch the surface. Legal historians have been uncovering, measuring, and analyzing capital punishment for decades and today we want to share some of what they’ve found. Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Violence Series, #2 of 4. Dueling seems crazy to us today. Two men take ten paces, turn to face each other, and stand still while they shoot to kill, all the while following strict rules. But while it’s easy to think of duels as simply evidence of a more violent age, dueling and other similar forms of violence offer an important window into the political, racial, and cultural history of the late 18th and early 19^th century. Duels weren’t just about shooting at a guy you disliked – they were about masculinity, slavery, race, politics, honor, class status, and the sectional crisis. We're talking about all this in this episode about dueling and political violence in America in the first half of the nineteenth century. Get the full transcript at digpodcast.orgBibliographyChernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. New York: Penguin Books, 2004.Earle, Jonathan. John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry: A Brief History with Documents.Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2008.Ellis, Joseph. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Vintage Books,2000.Freeman, Joanne B. The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 2001.Greenberg, Kenneth S. Honor &amp; Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman,Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, The Proslavery Argument,Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.Hoffer, Williamjames Hull. The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins ofthe Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2010.Letters from Alexander Hamilton to Aaron Burr, Founders Online, National Archives Online.Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Violence Series. Episode # 1 of 4. Today we are examining violence and lynching towards ethnic Mexican people along the Texas Mexico border during the early twentieth century. Particularly we are discussing the mob violence, or lynching, against Antionio Rodriguez in Rocksprings Texas in November of 1910. Typically when lynching in America is discussed it is in reference to the obscene amount of lynchings against Black people in the United States between Reconstruction and the mid-twentieth century. However, anti-Mexican violence was also a harsh reality of racial violence throughout the American Southwest. Find show notes and transcripts at: www.digpodcast.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2020 Series #4 of 4. Just over one month after the first shots of the Civil War were fired, three enslaved black men got into a row boat and paddled across the James River from mainland Virginia to the Union-occupied Fortress Monroe. Whether they knew it or not, the three young men – named Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory, and James Townsend – sparked the unraveling of the institution of slavery in the United States. In today’s installment of our ‘do-over’ series, we’re revisiting the complicated legal category of contraband, the term applied to enslaved people who fled to Union lines during the American Civil War. Find transcripts and show notes at: https://digpodcast.org/2020/01/26/slave-contraband-refugee-the-end-of-slavery-in-the-united-states Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2020 Series #3 of 4. What happens when you build an empire on sugar? Since the 18th century, sugar has been one of the most demanded commodities in the West. By the 1700s, technological advancements and production made sugar accessible to even some of the poorest Americans and Europeans, and imperial governments poured millions of dollars into the shaping of sugar colonies around the world. From the Caribbean to southeastern Africa to the Indian Ocean, sugar was king. But just as few today think on where their granulated white sugar comes from, those who consumed the White Gold between the 17th and 20th centuries knew little of the back-breaking, harsh, and unfree labor that went into producing that glorious sweetness, <em>or</em> the lengths to which their own governments went to float those potentially profitable sugar colonies. Empires built on sugar rotted away like teeth too long exposed to that sweetness. Find the complete transcript at digpodcast.orgBibliographyJames Patterson Smith, “Empire and Social Reform: British Liberals and the ‘Civilizing Mission in the Sugar Colonies,’ 1868-1874,” Albion 27.2 (1995) 253-77Philip D. Rotz, “Sweetness and Fever? Sugar Production, Aeses aegypti, and Dengue Fever in Natal, South Africa, 1926-27,” PSAE Research Series 12 (2014)“Bussa’s Rebellion,” UK National Archives Carol MacLennan, Sovereign Sugar : Industry and Environment in Hawaiʻi (University of Hawaii, 2014) Alice G. Walton, “How Much Sugar Are Americans Eating?” Forbes (Aug 2012) “Britain is built on sugar: our national sweet tooth defines us,” The Guardian (Oct 2007) Karl Watson, “Slavery and Economy in Barbados,” BBC (2/2011) Barrie Cook, “Pieces of Eight,” History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC & British Museum) Emma George Ross, “The Portuguese in Africa, 1415-1600” Met Museum Matthew Edel, “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle of the Seventeenth Century and the Rise of the West Indian Competition,” Caribbean Studies 9.1 (1969) 24-43.Mark Johnson, “The Sugar Trade in the West Indies and Brazil between 1492 and 1700,” University of Minnesota Expansion of Empire Seminar Sidney W. Mintz, “The Culture History of a Puerto Rican Sugar Cane Plantation: 1876-1949,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 33.2 (1953) 224-251.Heather Pringle, “Sugar Masters in a New World,” Smithsonian.com (January 2010)  Pictures & Graphs from C.J. Robertson, “Cane-Sugar Production in the British Empire,” Economic Geography 6.2 (1930) 131-151 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices