An illustration showing fencing positions, 1610

The Fencing Moral Panic of Elizabethan London

In Elizabethan England, it seemed like everyone was carrying a sharpened object with the intent to inflict damage.
Mothers' Crusade for Victory over Communism

Moral Panics: A Syllabus

Research-backed stories that consider how and why moral panics begin and spread, who they serve, and what becomes of them in the end.
Valium

Just Saying No To Valium

Ninety million bottles of Valium were dispensed yearly in the U.S. during the mellow Seventies. What happened?
Hogarth crime

The First Moral Panic: London, 1744

The late summer crime wave of 1744 London sparked an intense moral panic about crime that burnt itself out by the new year. But not before heads rolled.
Dance hall illustration

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.”