History (4,911 posts)

George Orwell’s dystopian novels Animal Farm and 1984 have remained popular in the U.S. ever since their initial publication in the 1940s. What’s less well known is that in the years before their publication… Orwell’s writing often focused primarily on other themes including work, poverty, anti-imperialism and democratic socialism. In fact, Orwell remained a committed democratic socialist until his death in 1950.

The Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), nicknamed the “chastity bill,” was a federal law that provided funding for teen pregnancy prevention under Ronald Reagan’s Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. AFLA specifically funded programs that solely promoted abstinence, and specifically did not provide funding for any programs that taught about abortion or contraception. This often led to direct federal funding of religious abstinence-only programs, and led to a loss in funding for comprehensive sex ed programs.

Drawing on extensive archival sources, ego documents, interviews and Soviet publications, this article explores the peculiarities of adoption practices in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania (LSSR) after the 1944 reoccupation.

Carson College was one of several privately endowed orphanages established in the early 20th century, and from 1917-1960, was administered by Elsa Ueland, a pioneer in the fields of social work and progressive education.

Through portraits of readers and their responses to texts, Reading Practice reconstructs the contours of the knowledge economy that shaped medicine and science in early modern England.

This article examines the emotional landscape of courtship and engagements in seventeenth-century Sweden. By using a framework by Illouz, understanding courtship as a cultural technique aimed at creating certainty in socially risky situations, the courtship of two women by one student is examined. The analysis moves from the intimate interactions of the couple to the family, the community and lastly the ecclesiastical and university authorities.

Elizabeth Stuyvesant of New York City, formerly of Cincinnati, was a professional dancer. She was active in settlement work and in the campaign for birth control. On July 4, 1917, she was arrested while picketing the White House for suffrage and sentenced to three days in District Jail.

Historically, artistic representations of adultery have been used to raise questions about the importance of love and sexual desire in marriage. Artists have also used their works to explore themes of culpability and punishment, and to explore the consequences of infidelity for the families of the adulterers. Above: The Stolen Kiss 1787 by JH Fragonard and/or M Gerard

Nobel Prize winning author Sinclair Lewis sequestered himself on his Vermont farm during the summer of 1935 and hammered away on his latest novel. He was in a hurry, fearing that real-world events might overtake his narrative. For his plot, Lewis drew from national and international headlines of the day, but he made the main character a Vermont newspaper editor and set most of the story among the green valleys of his adopted home.