90 Second Narratives

“Malta was warm. The afternoon sun stretched across the island as Lu Gwei-djen walked ahead…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Lan A. Li.

For further reading:
“Escaping Immortality: Science, Civilization, and Lu Gwei-djen (1904-1991)” by Lan A. Li (forthcoming)

Episode transcript:
https://skymichaeljohnston.com/90secnarratives/

“Bubonic plague ravaged Italy in the summer of 1630. Household healers scurried to make preventive remedies that would ward off this dread disease…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia.

For further reading:
Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy by Sharon T. Strocchia (Harvard University Press, 2019)

Episode transcript:
https://skymichaeljohnston.com/90secnarratives/

This special episode combines all the stories from Season 3…

“Motherhood and Adoption in Precolonial Uganda” - Dr. Rhiannon Stephens, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Columbia University

“Challenging the ‘Family Values Economy’” - Dr. Ryan Patrick Murphy, Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies at Earlham College

“Paternity, Immigration, and Legal Definitions of Family” - Dr. Nara Milanich, Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University

“A Marriage at the Nexus of Religious Communities” - Dr. Christine B. Lindner, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Murray State University

“Family, Mission, and Early Civil Rights Activism” - Dr. Kimberly Hill, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas

“A Mother Shapes the Mongol Empire” - Dr. Anne F. Broadbridge, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

“Frigid Mothers in Late Chosŏn Korea” - Dr. Ksenia Chizhova, Assistant Professor of Korean Literature and Cultural Studies at Princeton University

“A Father Fights for His Boy, a Soldier” - Dr. Rebecca Jo Plant, Associate Professor of History at the University of California San Diego

“Father and Son Pastors Interpret an Earthquake” – Dr. Sky Michael Johnston, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz

Follow 90 Second Narratives on Twitter @90secNARRATIVES.

“Starting in the late seventeenth century, Korean women’s identities became defined through the familial and domestic roles they performed in their husbands’ households…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Ksenia Chizhova.

For further reading:
Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday by Ksenia Chizhova (Columbia University Press, 2021)

“In 1843, the Protestant community in Ottoman Syria faced a challenge…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Christine B. Lindner.

For further reading:

Christine B. Lindner. “Syrian Protestant Marriages in Early to mid-Nineteenth Century Bilād al-Shām: 'Aliens at Home' or rooted in Syrian Tradition,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 27 (2018), 133-148.

“In August 1861, a fourteen-year old Pennsylvania boy named Oram Gregg joined a Union cavalry regiment…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Rebecca Jo Plant. 

For further reading:
Of Age: Boy Soldiers, Parental Rights, and Military Power in Civil War America by Rebecca Jo Plant and Frances Clarke

“Motherhood took different forms in the communities that lived on the north-west shores of Lake Victoria and in its littoral from around the eighth century…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Rhiannon Stephens.

For further reading:
A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700-1900 by Rhiannon Stephens (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

“This is a story about how people reacted to an earthquake that occurred in 1601 in the German region of Württemberg. Our guides for the story are two Lutheran pastors who were also father and son, Lucas and Andreas Osiander...”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Sky Michael Johnston.

For further reading:
Renaissance Meteorology: Pomponazzi to Descartes, by Craig Martin (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)

“This is a story about three young siblings, the Lees. In June 1952, the Lees, ages 11, 13, and 21, left China and arrived in the United States…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Nara Milanich.

For further reading:
Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father, by Nara B. Milanich (Harvard University Press, 2019)

“In 1204 on the East Asian steppe, Genghis Khan’s Mongol soldiers defeated enemies known as the Merkits, killed the Merkit princes, and took their wives and families as spoils. One of these wives was named Töregene…”

So begins today’s story from Dr. Anne F. Broadbridge. 

For further reading:
Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire, by Anne F. Broadbridge (Cambridge University Press, 2018)