Nursing Clio Project Connects Health, Gender and History

Abortion. Transgender rights. Maternal mortality. Many of health’s most pressing issues are intertwined with gender — and a collaborative, peer-reviewed project looks at the tangled roots that connect our bodies to past and present.

Group blog Nursing Clio, which recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, was founded by a group of scholars with an interest in the intersections of gender, history and health.

It describes itself as “a gathering site for historians, health care workers, community activists, students, and the public at large to engage in discussion of current and historical debates over medicine and the gendered body.”

That broad and ambitious scope lends itself to fascinating and varied takes on everything from war to obesity. Recent articles include historian Amanda Brennan’s look at the term “having it all” and its relationship to abortion, eugenics and race; archivist Vicky Iglikowski-Broad’s exploration of the history of menstrual products in the United Kingdom; and undergraduate Jesse Morales’s article on diversity in children’s television and its connections to mental health.