Episodes
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5 Cs, No 6 Cs of History Series. Continuity. Episode #4 of 4. Pretend it’s 500 BCE and you know nothing about modern, scientific medicine. You know nothing about anatomy or biochemistry or microbes. How would you approach the art of healing your loved ones when they became ill? How would you identify what’s wrong with them and offer them the supportive care they needed, their best chance of survival? You'd probably keep track of any events like vomiting, diarrhea, urination, wounds that are weeping or orifices that are secreting. Is pus or wax flowing out of their ear? Are they urinating way more or way less than normal? Is their urine super dark or smelly? Is that cut on their ankle looking crusty and gooey? Note your experience of trying to heal this loved one is shaped entirely by fluids. This is one of the reasons why, for millennia, the practice of healing followed a comprehensive, rational, and holistic explanation for disease based on vital fluids (or humors). This week, for the last episode in our Continuity series, we are discussing the millennias-long strangle-hold humoral medicine had on natural philosophy and medicinal healing. And… plot twist… we may be head back in this direction.
Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org
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The 6 Cs of History: Continuity, Episode #3 of 4. Starting in the late 1990s, historians like Deborah Simonton and Judith Bennett argued that if we take a step back a look at the longue duree of women’s history, the evidence suggests that even as Europe’s economies transformed from market places to market economies, women’s work--and the value placed on gendered labor--was and continues to be remarkably (and frustratingly) consistent. There was not, in fact, a transformative moment ushered in by capitalism, industrialization, or post-industrialization for women. Even when factoring in race, urban/rural divides, and class, European (and American) women’s labor was always valued less than men’s, whether in the “household economies” or guilds of the medieval period, on the factory floors of the industrial era, or in the office cubicles of our more recent history. Today we’re going to take a step back and look at the longer history of the gender wage gap, where we can see the continuity in women’s work from the 14th century to the present. For show notes and a transcript, visit digpodcast.org
Select Bibliography
Judith Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work:1700 to the Present (London, Routledge, 1998).
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Missing episodes?
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The 6 Cs of History, Continuity: Episode #2 of 4. In this final series on the 5- nope, 6 - C’s of historical thinking, we’re considering the concept of continuity. We’re much more accustomed to thinking about history as the study of change over time, but we must also consider the ways in which things do not change, or maybe, how they shift and morph in their details while staying, largely, consistent. In the United States, police brutality is, unfortunately, a constant. The contours and context change, extralegal violence at the hands of law enforcement does not. Today, we’re talking about long and in many ways unchanging history of police brutality in the United States.
Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org
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The 6 C's of History, Continuity: Episode #1 of 4. Reproductive labor is the labor or work of creating and maintaining the next generation of workers. This is the work of birth, breastfeeding or bottle feeding, washing dirty butts and wiping runny noses, nursing those who unable to care for themselves, keeping living areas habitable by washing and getting rid of refuse- and figuring out how to get water or where to put trash if not living with modern conveniences, cooking- including the sourcing, storing, and knowledge of food production to not make people ill. All of the things that humans rely on but that either through biology or through gendered norms, are the domain of women. Today we’re discussing the history of how reproductive labor was gendered as women’s work, the continuity of the undervaluation of reproductive labor within capitalism, and how this undervaluing contributes to the implications of gendered labor. Put more bluntly, capitalism is dependent on undervalued reproductive and gendered labor, and we’re gonna explore that history a bit in this episode. Find the transcript, full bibliography, our swag store, and other resources at digpodcast.orgSelect BibliographyFriedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1884.Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman. Slavery's Capitalism : A New History of American Economic Development. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2016.Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).Caitlin Rosenthal. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. (Harvard University Press, 2018).Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2012).Lauel thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American MythLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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5 Cs of History. Contingency. Episode #4 of 4. It’s October 10, 732 and the Umayyad armies commanded by Abd al-Rahman are facing the Franks led by Charles Martel. The battle is bloody and chaotic. When the fog clears, the Umayyad Muslim invasion is halted, and the Frankish Kingdom under Charles Martel emerges as a powerful force in Christendom. Historian Edward Gibbon writes that Tours was one of “the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our neighbors of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran.” He continues, saying that if it weren’t for the Battle of Tours, “Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomat.” This week we are finishing our series on the last of the five Cs, contingency, by exploring the Battle of Tours, also called the Battle of Poitiers, which has been remembered as the only event preventing the Islamization of Western civilization. But, as always, it’s so much more complicated than that.
Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org
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5 Cs of History: Contingency #3 of 4. In spring 1931, Li Shui Tong [Lee Jow Tong] met Magnus Hirschfeld when the latter was giving a public lecture in Shanghai. Li was a medical student with a deep--and vested--interest in the exciting new field of sexology. Hirschfeld’s work and ideas would go on to shape modern ideas about “homosexuality” in clear and often problematic ways. The theory of homosexuality that Hirschfeld built in the early decades of his research was built on ideas about biological race, empire, and a white male subjectivity. His work shaped the way people talked about sexuality for decades after his death. The white European, and male-centricness of sexology, gay rights, and gay rights movements came as a result of Hirschfeld’s fusion of his early work with a theory about “the races,” and the imperialist presumptions of his early work that assumed a white, cis male body to be the standard around which rights needed to be procured and sexuality needed to be understood. To examine Li and Hirschfeld’s story is to grapple with the contingency of history. Individual choices matter, and outcomes are the result of the confluence of events, disasters, and decisions. As historians Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke argued, “the world is a magnificently interconnected place. Change a single prior condition, and any historical outcome could have turned out differently.”
Bibliography
Heike Bauer, The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture (Temple University Press, 2017).
Ed. Heike Bauer, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters Across the Modern World (Temple University Press, 2015).
Howard Chiang, After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018).
Howard Chiang, Sexuality in China: HIstories of Power and Pleasure (University of Washington Press, 2018).
Laurie Marhoefer, Racism and the Making of Gay Rights: A Sexologist, His Student, and the Empire of Queer Love (University of Toronto Press, 2022).
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Five Cs of History. Contingency. Episode #2 of 4. At the turn of the 20th century, Buffalo was - to borrow a phrase from historian Mark Goldman - a city on the edge. Perfectly situated on Lake Erie and a hub for railroads, Buffalo was a critical part of the country’s trade infrastructure. It was an ideal spot to unload cereal crops from the midwest, for instance, to be stored in the city’s many grain elevators until it could be moved along by rail or transferred to waterfront mills for processing. It had a booming ship building industry for lake-going schooners and steamers. It was close to the incredible power generating potential of Niagara Falls, the leader in mass produced energy in the newly electrified United States. It had a small but growing steel industry and was looking for ways to rival Pittsburgh as America’s steel city. The future, it seemed, was bright, glowing with electric potential. But no one could predict what would go wrong. Join us as we discuss the historical concept of contingency using NY state's Queen City.
Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org
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5 Cs of History, Contingency #1 of 4. The U.S. healthcare system is the way it is because of decisions made by people at various points in the last century. America’s healthcare issue is the result of a series of interconnected decisions and events and catastrophes. This episode is a part of our 5 c’s of history episode and today we are exploring contingency. Contingency is “The idea that every historical outcome depends on a multitude of prior conditions; that each of these prior conditions depends, in turn, upon still other conditions; and so on. The core insight of contingency is that the world is a magnificently interconnected place. Change a single prior condition, and any historical outcome could have turned out differently.” So we’re going to do an overview of the American health insurance system and touch on some key points along the way. For the script and resources, visit digpodcast.org
Bibliography
Conn, Steven. ed. To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government. Oxford UP, 2012.
Gerber, David A. Disabled Veterans in History. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan, 2012.
Hoffman, Beatrix. Healthcare for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States Since 1930. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Klein, Jennifer. For All these Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State. Princeton University Press, 2006.
Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Harvard University Press, 2000.
Starr, Paul. Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar American Struggle over Health Care Reform. New Haven, Connecticut; London: Yale University Press, 2011.
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5Cs of History, Complexity: #4 of 4. During the Tang dynasty in the mid 8th century, a military leader named Li Baozhen was frustrated with his aging body. He had achieved much military glory and material wealth in his life, but he was aging and facing the fact that death was approaching. But he had also had dreams that he was riding triumphantly through the sky on a crane. Surely this was an omen! At the same time, Li Baozhen met Sun Jichang, who was a fangshi - a word that can be translated as alchemist, wizard, magician, and also doctor or physician. Sun Jichang offered Li Baozhen a concoction that he promised would allow him to “transcend” death. Inspired by his dreams of slipping away from earth on the back of a crane, Li Baozhen took the elixir - only to become incredibly sick. Li Baozhen’s experience captures something of the complexity of Chinese medicine: competing ideas of how to heal, the use of various powerful medicines in careful (and not so careful) doses, the intermingling of spiritual and medicial philosophies, and the quest for health and power, even immortality. For this installment in our series on the five C’s of historical thinking, we’re contemplating the historical concept of complexity through an exploration of Chinese medicine.
Bibliography
Andrews, Bridie. The Making of Modern Chinese Medicine, 1850-1960. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014.
Goldschmidt, Asaf. The Evolution of Chinese Medicine: The Song Dynasty, 960-1200. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.
Goldschmidt, Asaf. “Epidemics and Medicine during the Northern Song Dynasty: The Revival of Cold Damage Disorders,” T’oung Pao 93 (2007): 53-109.
Liu, Yan. Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021.
Lo, Vivienne and Michael Stanley-Baker, “Chinese Medicine,” in A Global History of Medicine, ed., Mark Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, trans. Maoshing Ni. Boston: Shambhala Press, 1995.
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5 Cs of History. Complexity. Episode #3 of 4. Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and its residents are considered United States citizens. However the island’s political status remains a subject of debate and discussion. Some Puerto Ricans advocate for independence, while others support maintaining the current status as a territory, pursuing statehood, or seeking other forms of self-determination for the island. The political status of Puerto Rico remains a complex and ongoing issue.
Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org
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5 Cs of History: Complexity, #2 of 4. Josephine Baker’s life story - both what we know and what we don’t/can’t know - is fascinating. For our purposes today, her life story is a perfect case study for complexity in historical thinking. Not only was she an icon of contradictions, but the way she lived and interacted with the world has allowed historians and feminist scholars to really tease out the complexity of her lifetime. Josephine Baker lived from 1906 until 1975. She was both a Civil Rights activist and a performer who used blackface and racialized tropes to entertain. She was both a woman who had intimate (probably sexual) relationships with other women, and exiled an adopted son when he came out to her as gay. She was both a deeply private woman and opened her home to the public like an amusement park. And for most of her life she lived in France, which was both deeply enamored with Black American culture and music and deeply racist. As Josephine Baker shows us, historical moments, like life stories, are rarely simple.
Bibliography
Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart, (Random House New York, 1993).
Peggy Caravantes, The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015) 151.
Luca Cerchiari, Laurent Cugny, and Franz Kerschbaumer, Eurojazzland (Boston: Northwestern University Press, 2012)
Ed. Mae G. Henderson and Charlene B. Register, The Josephine Baker Critical Reader
FBI Records: The Vault — Josephine Baker
Patrick O’Connor. “Josephine Baker.” American National Biography Online
Mary McAuliffe, When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s paris of hemingway, chanel, cocteau, cole porter, josephine baker, and their friends (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2016)
Alan Schroeder and Heather Lehr Wagner, Josephine Baker: Entertainer (New York: Chelsea House, 2006)
Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007).
Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time, (DoubleDay, 1989).
Jennifer Sweeney-Risko, “Fashionable ‘Formation’: Reclaiming the Sartorial Politics of Josephine Baker,” Australian Feminist Studies 2018, VOL. 33, NO. 98, 498–514
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Complexity Series. Five Cs of History. Episode #1 of 4. The dominant narrative- and the story that many of you expect to hear today- is that fatness used to be less stigmatized; that plump women were beautiful and plump men regarded as wealthy and important but that somewhere along the way, thinness became associated with beauty and fatness became medicalized as obesity and stigmatized as disgusting, leading to today’s skinny-loving, fat-phobic culture. There are, of course, elements of truth to this story but… it’s also way more COMPLEX than this. This week for our Complexity series, we’re covering the complex history of fatness in the premodern West.
Find transcripts and show notes here: www.digpodcast.org
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5 Cs of History: Change Over Time, Episode #4 of 4. Written and spoken language are separate things. Languages that are connected to a written script change more slowly and last longer than those that don’t. Writing acts as an anchor to humans’ ever-changing speech sounds. But these two aspects of language (speech and writing) did not always go hand in hand. Today we dive into the history of the written word.
Bibliography
Fischer, Steven R. A History of Writing New ed. London: Reaktion Books. 2021.
Gabrial, Brian. “History of Writing Technologies,” in Bazerman Charles. 2008. Handbook of Research on Writing : History Society School Individual Text. New York: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Powell Barry B. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 2012.
Stanlaw, James. The International Encyclopedia of Linguistic Anthropology. Hoboken NJ: Wiley Blackwell. 2021.
Stroud, Kevin. https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/
“The Evolution of Writing.” Published in James Wright, ed., INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Elsevier, 2014 https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/
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Change over Time Series. The Five Cs of History. Episode #3 of 4. The Rights Revolution movements of the twentieth century were deeply connected to one another, with activists known for their work in one movement having cut their teeth in the others. These movements were also profoundly influenced and connected to struggles of the past, with older movements having either been where activists began their activism or were mentored by senior members in the struggle. Additionally, many historians and sociologists are tweaking the narrative of “feminisms” by displaying how the feminist movement has been a continual movement and how many different feminisms have co-existed throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Feminism did not “go silent” at times but has always been present in different ways.
Find show notes and transcripts at www.digpodcast.org
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5 Cs of History. Change over Time. Episode #2 of 4. In recent years, America’s two party system has seemed more intractable than ever: Democrats vs. Republicans. Now, we have a clear idea of each party’s location on the political map: Democrats are liberal, Republicans conservative; Democrats are left-leaning, Republicans right-leaning. Right now, those truths seems so deeply entrenched that they seem almost natural - it’s always been this way and always will be. But if historians know anything it’s this: things change. In this episode, we’re thinking about change over time by looking at the long history of America’s political parties.
Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org
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Five Cs of History. Change Over Time #1 of 4. Roger Casement has been a subject of fascination - and controversy - for over a century. During his lifetime, he was an internationally-recognized champion for human rights, and was instrumental in exposing the horrors surrounding the rubber industry in the Belgian Congo and Peruvian Putumayo. Significantly, he spent his life striving to do more than just expose the injustices of the Congo and Putumayo - he built a network of activists and leaders willing to intercede, push for reform, and demand change for the indigenous peoples who suffered under European occupation. After years working within the British Empire, he was radicalized in his Irish nationalist beliefs, and spent the last two years of his life working to fight for Ireland’s independence from Britain. After his execution, some held on to the memory of him as a humanitarian hero, others claimed he was another martyr of the Irish nationalist cause, and still others distanced themselves from his evident homosexuality. The question of his sexuality determined whether or not he could be counted among the ‘real’ Irish heroes.
Find the transcript and show notes at www.digpodcast.org
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5 Cs of History. Causality Series #4 of 4. Despite the fact that eighty percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, it does not. That is because the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified. Despite being introduced in 1923, the ERA was not passed by Congress until 1972. However, the amendment failed to be ratified by the required number of states before the deadline set by Congress, and therefore did not become part of the Constitution. Since then, efforts to pass the ERA have continued but legal and political obstacles remain, and the ERA has yet to be officially added to the U.S. Constitution. We are in the process of exploring the 5 C’s of history on the podcast this year and in this series we are exploring causality, meaning how historians evaluate multiple factors that shape past events. Today we will look at the Equal Rights Amendment and the reasons that --so far-- it has not become law.
Find transcripts and show notes at www.digpodcast.org
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5 C's of History: Causality, #3 of 4. In 2017, White House chief of staff John Kelly, then serving Donald Trump, was interviewed by Fox New’s Laura Ingraham, who asked about Kelly’s thoughts on a church in Virginia that had recently taken down a statue to Robert E. Lee. Kelly responded that Robert E. Lee had been a “honorable man” who “gave up his country to fight for his state,” and claimed that the war had been caused by a “lack of ability to compromise.” Today, when asked the reason for the Civil War, most of us would immediately- and correctly - say slavery. And nearly all historians would support that. But still, the question nags. What about slavery caused a violent, protracted civil war? What event or issue or Supreme Court case or compromise was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or was it the competing cultures of North and South that did it, both created and exacerbated by the existence of Black chattel slavery? Today, as we continue to explore the concept of causality as a historical thinking skill, we’re talking about the causes of the American Civil War.Select BibliographyAstor, Aaron, Judith Giesberg, Kellie Carter Jackson, Martha S. Jones, Brian Matthew Jordan, James Oakes, Jason Phillips, Angela M. Riotto, Anne Sarah Rubin, Manisha Sinha. “Forum on Eric Foner’s “The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions.” Civil War History 69 (2023): 60-86. Blight, David. Was the Civil War Inevitable? The New York Times Magazine. December 21, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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5 Cs of History: Causality Series. Episode #2 of 4. There was a sense, among very learned folks, that Rome had been something great that had been lost. In their grief, Renaissance scholars pored over classical manuscripts, attempting to build a picture of Rome’s greatness and, perhaps, find a reason for its disintegration. Rome’s fall was bemoaned, even resented by some but the mechanics of its demise were still a bit of a mystery. Fifth century Roman manuscripts were few and far between. Renaissance scholars were forced to piece together scraps of information and tie them together with incredible amounts of conjecture. That is, until 1665 when a French legal scholar named Jacques Godefroy used a very old document in very new ways and revolutionized what we knew about the Roman Empire’s fifth-century demise. Godefroy’s work launched what is perhaps the most contentious academic debate in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, listeners, for this week’s episode on causation, we are tackling the Fall of Rome.
Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org
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The 5 C's of History: Causality Series, #1 of 4. According to the website of Britain’s National Army Museum, the first Opium War started when, “In May 1839, Chinese officials demanded that Charles Elliot, the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, hand over their stocks of opium at Canton for destruction. This outraged the British, and was the incident that sparked conflict.” In popular culture, and especially among European and American historians, the “Opium Wars” have long been framed as a conflict between the powerful/domineering British and the weak/insular Chinese, in which the British exploited China by getting the Chinese people addicted to opium and then went to war when the Chinese government finally tried to stop them, and the British used their military might to then extract punishing and unequal trade relationships with the Chinese for the next 100 years. Certainly elements of this framework, of this cause and effect, are true. There was a confrontation in May of 1839, and the Nanking Treaty absolutely created an exploitative and unequal trade relationship between the British and Chinese. And yet, unsurprisingly, this is far from the whole story - and far from the only way historians have interpreted the “Opium Wars”. Today we’re going to discuss the causes of the first Opium War, and the different - sometimes problematic - ways historians have framed the 1839-42 Anglo-Sino conflict.
Select Bibliography
Transcribed Qianlong emperor’s letter to King George III - in Chinese, and in English
Song-Chuan Chen, Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War (Oxford University Press, 2017)
Paul French, Through the Looking Glass: China’s Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao (Hong Kong University Press, 2009).
Henrietta Harrison, “The Qianlong Emperor’s Letter to George III and the Early-Twentieth-Century Origins of IDeas about Traditional China’s Foreign Relations,” American Historical Association (2017).
Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War And The End Of China's Last Golden Age (Penguin, 2019)
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