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Black and white headshot of author Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist Her debut book, The Heroine’s Bookshelf (Harper), won a Colorado Book Award for Nonfiction and has been translated into Italian, Korean and Portuguese. Erin has written about history and culture and other topics for Smithsonian.com, The Washington Post, TIME, mental_floss, NPR’s This I Believe, The Onion, Popular Science, Modern Farmer and other journals. You can find more of her work at erinblakemore.com.

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Agnes Chase
Plants & Animals

Women’s Fight for Scientific Fieldwork

How did women scientists fit into the naturalists and botanist mix during their earliest days in the field?
The Devil Wears Prada
Arts & Culture

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ and the Retail Orgy in Film

On the film portrayals of women that equate consumption and love.
classroom
Education

The Problem of School Discipline in the Twenties

Teachers, especially women, faced social pressure in both directions when it came to school discipline in the 1920s. 
Sir Walter Scott
Arts & Culture

What Sir Walter Scott’s Historical Fiction Reveals About the Brexit

A scholar locates early European Unionism in the works of Sir Walter Scott. How would Scott have voted in the Brexit referendum?
New York Dada
Art & Art History

What Did Fashion Magazines Have To Do With Dada?

When you think of Dada, do you think of Europe? If so, you’re missing one of its hotbeds—New York.
Buzz Aldrin with equipment on the moon
Natural Science

What the Space Race Left Behind

How should the artifacts of the space race be preserved?
Tang ad
Education & Society

There’s Class Inside That Glass of Tang

A scholar examines kitschy American foods as an entree into a conversation about class in the United States.
Nurses
Politics & History

19th-Century Nurses’ Fight to Battle Yellow Fever

With warnings that a shortage of the vaccine against the virus could spur on a new epidemic, yellow fever is again in the scientific spotlight.
Tesla
Science & Technology

Nikola Tesla and the Death Ray Craze

Nikola Tesla, the audacious futurist and groundbreaking inventor, once claimed to have invented a death ray that would end all war.
Image of ice in sparkling water
Politics & History

The Irish Were Way Ahead of the Soda Water Trend

Soda water is a popular beverage now, but it was once considered a cure, among other things.
Langston Hughes
Arts & Culture

The Drag Aesthetic of Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes' poetry was influenced by the drag scene in 1920s Harlem.
wagon
Health

The Strange Tale of 19th-Century Quack Doctors

During the 19th century, quack “doctors” outnumbered legitimate ones three to one. The reasons people are attracted to quackery remain with us today.
Hanna Reitsch
Politics & History

The Role of Female Pilots in Nazi Germany

German female pilots played an active role during World War II—acting as perpetrators and collaborators even as they broke barriers for women in flight.
Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in 1897
Politics & History

Racism, the South, and Helen Keller

As one of her day’s most famous Southerners, Helen Keller was uniquely poised to point out—and challenge—that troubled racial heritage.
The inside of a quant Victorian parlor with mustard wallpaper, an intricately carved piano, and decor ranging from colorful flowers to vases
Art & Art History

“The Culture of the Copy”: Victorians’ Obsession With Wax Flowers

Wax flowers were a major obsession of Victorian women, allowing them to combine art and industry.
The Berlin Wall
Politics & History

Why Was There a Berlin Wall in the First Place?

A brief history of East and West Germany, and why they built the Berlin Wall.
A 1950's beauty advertisement from the 1930s
Arts & Culture

How Fashion Magazines Talked in the 1930s

The Splashy language of fashion magazines prompted one linguist to look closer at the over-the-top dialect in Vogue and Ladies’ Home Journal of the 30s
Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok in Puerto Rico
Politics & History

Before #MoreThanMean, This Woman Innovated Sportswriting

Sportswriting by women is not a new phenomenon. Lorena Hickok was a forerunner for women sportswriters, and began her career on the college football beat.
Cubes of red jello on white background
Education & Society

How Jell-O Wobbled Its Way to Pop Culture Greatness

Jell-O reveals volumes about things that obsess, upset, and fuel Americans. 
Sigrid Undset
Arts & Culture

The Best Book You’ve Never Read

The best book you've never read may just be 'Kristin Lavransdatter,' which won its author Sigrid Undset the Nobel Prize in 1928.
Poling Hotel and Saloon Laurelville OH Approx 1903
Politics & History

What Red Light Ladies Reveal About the American West

Prostitution and sex work are useful metric for historians seeking insight into the American West.
A happy newly wed couple in the 1950's.
Education

When Marriage Was Part of The College Curriculum

Marriage education, seeking to teach dating and marriage on campus, was a reaction to urbanization, industrialization, and the new autonomy of the young.
Happy emojis
Education & Society

The Equation for Happiness

Is there an equation for happiness? And if so, can science really define it?
The Ghost Road, The Eye in the Door, Regeneration, by Pat Barker
Arts & Culture

Women Write War Fiction, Too

Women do write war fiction, and that oft-ignored body of literature deserves another look.
Headline reading, "New Popular Idol Rises in Bavaria: Hitler Credited With Extraordinary Powers of Swaying Crowds to His Will"
Politics & History

How Hitler Played the American Press

Did the AP and other news organizations get tricked into sympathetic coverage of Hitler?

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