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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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Dance hall illustration
Arts & Culture

Jane Addams’s Crusade Against Victorian “Dancing Girls”

Jane Addams, a leading Victorian-era reformer, believed dance halls were “one of the great pitfalls of the city.”
Edith Stein
Education & Society

Edith Stein, the Jewish Woman Who Became a Catholic Saint

In 1998, Pope John Paul II made one of his most contentious canonizations, elevating a Jewish woman named Edith Stein to the status of saint.
Roosevelt Family 1903
Politics & Government

Alice Roosevelt: The Original First Kid

Alice Roosevelt set the tone for a more public first kid and laid the foundation for post-White-House activism like Chelsea Clinton’s.
Choctaw woman
Arts & Culture

How 19th Century Women Were Taught to Think About Native Americans

In nineteenth-century American women's magazines, Native American women were depicted as attractive, desirable, and pious.
Old movie theater
Arts & Culture

Weirdly Enough, Movies about TV Prepared America for TV

Ironically, it was movies that helped accustom American viewers to television in the first place, writes Richard Koszarski.
1984 cover
Arts & Culture

America’s Unlikely Cold War Weapon

During the Cold War years, the distribution and selection of American books had to change with changing objectives overseas.
Filming make-up tutorial
Education & Society

Can Makeup Be Feminist?

Makeup has become a huge industry. Is it possible to enjoy the practice of beautification and be feminist at the same time?
Public Baths
Politics & History

Public Baths Were Meant to Uplift the Poor

In Progressive-Era New York, a now-forgotten trend of public bathhouses was introduced in order to cleanse the unwashed masses.
Victorian era dog
Plants & Animals

The Victorian Debate Over Rabies

Rabies began a contentious debate between Victorian pet owners and veterinary experts about how to regulate dog health. Rough.
Urania painting
Natural Science

Before the Civil War, Women Were Welcomed into the Sciences

Women in the STEM fields are reclaiming the memory of a richer scientific past than some might think.
Chautauqua
Education

The Forgotten Movement That Changed American Women’s Lives

Chatauquas changed the lives of Midwestern women between 1878 and 1900, setting the stage for new gender roles in the twentieth century.
Lizzie Borden
Politics & History

Why We’re So Obsessed With Lizzie Borden’s 40 Whacks

Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were brutally murdered, possibly by Lizzie herself, in August 1892. Why are we still dissecting the crime?
Couple Kissing
Education & Society

The Books that Taught the Seventies to Have Sex

What can 1970s sex manuals tell us about the height of the Sexual Revolution? The 1970s was a distinctive sexual decade that’s well worth studying today.
French bread
Education & Society

Pioneers Were America’s Original Artisanal Bakers

Why were cowboys and pioneers so obsessed with their baked goods? A look at the birth of sourdough culture (har har) in the United States.
Graceland facade
Arts & Culture

Was Graceland Elvis’ Greatest Aesthetic Masterpiece?

When you think of the aesthetic life of Elvis Presley, you probably think of the gaudy glitz of Graceland. But what did the tacky décor really mean?
Pregnant woman portrait
Health

When C-Sections Were Performed to Save Dead Babies’ Souls

In 1804, Charles IV, King of Spain, issued a legal admonition telling officials not to bury any pregnant woman without giving her a C-section first.
New Designs in Menswear
Politics & History

This Short-Lived Political Party Embraced Socks With Sandals

The Men’s Dress Reform Party (MDRP) called for liberation from dark, tightly-knit textiles...and had some ties to the eugenics movement.
Woman sitting on chair, putting on stockings
Arts & Culture

Why Women Burned Their Stockings in the 1930s

The average 1930s American woman bought up to 15 pairs of silk stockings a year—until, that is, women boycotted the fabric behind an essential garment.
NYC Subway Sandhogs
Politics & History

The Sandhogs Who Built the New York Subway

Unlike other laborers, who toiled anonymously on bridges and buildings throughout the city, the sandhogs had an iconic status in New York City.
Hormel Girls
Arts & Culture

The Singing, Dancing Hormel Girls Who Sold America SPAM

SPAM was introduced 80 years, but it was a military-style corps of singing women that helped the canned meat skyrocket in the years after World War II.
Amelia Earhart
Politics & History

Amelia Earhart Taught America to Fly

Amelia Earhart taught America to fly. How Earhart and other women pilots of her day helped overcome Americans’ skepticism about flight.
Amelie Mauresmo
Education & Society

The Sexual Politics of Wimbledon

At Wimbledon, tennis is about more than tennis. The story of Amélie Mauresmo illustrates the complex sexual politics of women athelete’s bodies.
Mt. Holyoke Balloon Day
Education

How Women Crushed on One Another Back in the Day

Same-sex crushes and romantic friendships between college-age women were common throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Illustration of Delaney flowers
Arts & Culture

An 18th-Century “Sapphist”’s Sexy Garden

The 18th-century "sapphist" gardens of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany were piquant places that expressed same-sex desires.
Dan Rather
Arts & Culture

Dan Rather on Dan Rather

Dan Rather's ruminations on politics and morality feel so 2017. This interview he gave in the '70s lends insight into how seriously he takes journalism.

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