Dig: A History Podcast

 In the age of #MeToo, rape and sexual assault have been consistently in the news. Debates abound about what counts as rape, whose testimony we should believe, and too often, men with power and privilege get away with it. But though it feels pressing right now, none of those debates are new. Join Sarah and Marissa as they look for context for today’s debates in Sharon Block’s important book, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sex Series #1 of 4. Have you been tested? Averill and Elizabeth take a look at the long history of Europeans blaming women for sexual transmitted diseases, and the gendered and racially charged British imperial policies for locking up women to protect the penises of imperial men. A complete transcript and the full list of sources and further reading are available at digpodcast.org. Some of the key sources for this episode include: ed. Kevin Siena, Sins of the Flesh: Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe; Philippa Levine,Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire; Alain Corbin, Women for hire: Prostitution and sexuality in France after 1850 ; Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris; and LOTS of articles - check out the Bibliography for all of them! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies Episode #4 of 4. Shannon Withycombe's <em>Lost: Miscarriage in Nineteenth-Century America</em> puts miscarriage at the center of the study of nineteenth-century science, medicine, and women’s experience with their reproductive bodies. You may be surprised by the range of responses to pregnancy loss, motherhood, and reproduction in the 19th century. Get the transcript and complete bibliography at digpodcast.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies #3 of 4. In 1996, two college students stumbled upon some skeletal remains in the Columbia River in Washington. The body, it turns out, was the oldest ever found in North America. In order to understand the story and controversy of the Kennewick Man, also known as The Ancient One, we need to go way back to the ethnographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists of the 19th century. These men sought to unlock the mysteries of race by collecting skulls and bones they could measure and examine, and ultimately, they constructed a theory of race that confirmed their own racist world views, one which we still use today. Find show notes and episode transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies Episode #2 of 4. From whence came the poxiest of poxes? Averill and Marissa dive into the debates surrounding the origin of syphilis, with historians, paleobiologists, forensic anthropologists, and Shakespeare all weighing in. Further Reading: Kevin Siena, Sins of the Flesh: Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2005); Jon Arrizabalaga, John Henderson, and Roger French, The great pox : the French disease in Renaissance Europe (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1997); and Susan M. Reverby, Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy(The University of North Carolina Press, 2013). A complete bibliography and transcript can be found at digpodcast.org.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bodies #1 of 4. In this week's episode, we are going medieval. Conventional narratives tell us that medieval lepers were pariahs who lived out their days as rejected invalids, rotting away in decrepit asylums, quarantined from society. Some of this is true. The disease became so common in Europe, however, that medieval society was compelled to adapt to the presence of the chronically ill. Listen as we explore the lived experiences of medieval lepers on the Eurasian continent using documentary evidence combined with the latest paleopathological and anthropological findings. Find show notes and transcripts here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frontiers, Episodes #4 of 4. Find the transcript and complete show notes at digpodcast.org. Victorian-era European imperialism was facilitated by the thousands of missionaries, businessmen, soldiers, and private police forces employed by the religious, economic, and military institutions of “civilized” Europe, but there were also individuals that facilitated this process, such as Henry Morton Stanley, Joseph Conrad, and Roger Casement. These individuals were essential to the larger effort to normalize imperialism. They were seen as national heroes, adventurers, larger-than-life pinnacles of Europe’s “civilizing” mission in sub-Saharan Africa. All of these men treated sub-Saharan Africa as if it were theirs for the taking, where they could play and profit as they saw fit. All of these men were essential to European imperialism in sub-Saharan Africa: its rise, its fall, and its impact on the people it crushed along the way. So today we’re going to take a look at where Conrad, Casement, and Stanley’s stories intersect: in the Congo, or as Joseph Conrad called it, in the “Heart of Darkness.” Brief Bibliography (get the full bibliography at digpodcast.org): Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (Houghton Miffling, 1999).Tim Jeal, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer (Yale University Press, 2007).Agata Szczeszak-Brewer, Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad (University of South Carolina Press, 2015)Dean Pavlakis, British Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Movement, 1896-1913(Routledge, 2015) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frontiers #3 of 4. Black cowboys made up at least one third of the cowhands that drove cattle along the long trails from Texas to mid-western and northern points in the middle of the 19th century. But you’d never know that from the images of the “cowboy” in popular culture. Contrary to popular media depictions, black cowboys were integral to the transformation of the West. They joined the round-ups, cattle drives, and served on the ranch crews that define the era of the great trail drives in the American West. Some were lured by the open range, the chance for regular, albeit low, wages, and the opportunity to start new lives. Others worked cattle and horses because those were the skills they honed while they were enslaved, and after emancipation they continued to work on the ranches and farms they and their parents had served on before the Civil War. Today we’re talking about cowboys, and cowgirls, of color in the American west. For transcripts and show notes click here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frontiers Series, Episode #2 of 4. Is space the new frontier? What are the links between the so-called “age of exploration,” the conquering of the American West, and the United States space program? We will be covering those questions and others in today's podcast, The Final Frontier: History, Science, and Space Exploration. Bibliography and transcript at digpodcast.org.Show NotesHoward McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997).Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Frontiers #1 of 4. Fur trading and frontier life in French Canada. As frontiers typically are, the story of the French Canadian wilderness has been a gendered one since its earliest iterations. If it ever existed in reality, this straightforward, masculine escape was complicated by complex alliances with matrilineal aboriginals and state-sponsored waves of immigration that brought radical women, authoritarian clergy, cloistered nuns, swashbuckling soldiers, skilled artisans, and eventually French nobility into the fold of frontier life. This week, we will attempt to uncover the lived experiences of men and women on the French Canadian frontier and think about how the trade in furs shaped their lives in interesting and very gendered ways. Find transcripts and show notes here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices