Dig: A History Podcast

Occult Series. Episode #4 of 4. If you visit the city of New Orleans, Louisiana you will be regaled by stories of the magnanimous Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Join any of the hundreds of walking tours of the city and tour guides will weave tales of fact and fiction as you travel down the narrow streets of the French Quarter, and meander through the uneven grounds of NOLA’s famous cemeteries. Unable to visit New Orleans? No worries, just turn on the TV and watch a highly fictionalized account of Marie Laveau in American Horror Story “Coven” and “Apocalypse,” played by Angela Bassett. Or do a simple Google search and find pages and pages of blog posts and articles mixing snippets of fact with a heavy dose of legend for some interesting and entertaining reading. Since her death in 1881 Marie Laveau has morphed from a respected and charitable neighbor, or a “she-devil” and mysterious Voodoo Queen (depending on whose talking), and into a saint of strong, Black, feminist womanhood. How do we separate popular history from fact? Today we are digging into the real life of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, and navigating the buried line between fact and fiction.

Find transcript and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org

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Occult Series #3 of 4. Whether we’ve ever really given it any study, we’re all at least a little familiar with the link between the Nazi party and the occult. Movies like Captain America and Hellboy have plot lines that center on supernatural obsessions of Nazi leadership, desperately trying to find magical or supernatural ways of winning the war and establishing the Nazi worldview. Indiana Jones famously fought the Nazis - more than once! - to secure the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant, which the Nazis hoped would bring them cosmic power. But this is just pop culture, embellishing what we already know was a fanatical movement to create compelling movie plots, right? Right? Well, as we always say, it’s complicated - but in short, while those movie plotlines might be exaggerated for dramatic effect, they weren’t made up out of wholecloth. The NSDAP, or the National Socialist Worker’s Party, which rose to power in the interwar period led by Adolf Hitler, was a party ideologically enabled by occultist theories about the Aryan race and vampiric Jews, on old folk talks about secret vigilante courts and protective werewolves, and on pseudoscience ideas about ice moons. In this episode, we’re going to explore the occult ideas, racial mythology, and ‘supernatural imaginary’ that helped to create the Nazi Party.

Bibliography

Kurlander, Eric. Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.

Paradiz, Valerie. Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books, 2008.  

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Occult Series. Episode #2 of 4. In 1980s Japan, mizuko spirit attacks, or hauntings by the spirits of aborted fetuses, were on the rise among middle school and high school girls. Listen to one Japanese teen's testimonial: “You probably won’t believe it, but mizuko spirit attacks are really frightful. Last summer, I got knocked up. I went to the hospital for an abortion, but about a week later, I started hearing the crying voice of a baby in the middle of the night, coming from inside me. Soon after that, a red blob came out of me, and when I looked at it closely, it looked like a baby. I was so scared! So last Sunday I went to a temple in Kamakura and offered incense before a statue of Mizuko Jizō. That’s what happened to me. Be careful, everybody!” This exact scenario DID happen to many young women in Japan in the 1980s. There was a sudden uptick in mizuko spirit attacks among young women and a media blitz about this phenomenon. But what are mizuko attacks exactly? And which came first? The media blitz or the hauntings? How were young women supposed to get rid of them? And what did this all mean? Find out in today’s episode about the history of mizuko spirit attacks.

Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org

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Occult #1 of 4. In the 1970s, Lorraine and Ed Warren had a spotlight of paranormal obsession shining on them. In the last decade, their work as paranormal investigators--ghost hunters--has been the premise for a blockbuster horror franchise totaling at least seven films so far, and more planned in the near future. So… what the heck? Is this for real? Yes, friends, today we’re talking about demonology, psychic connections to the dead, and the patriarchy. Just a typical day with your historians at Dig.

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Sarah Bartels, The Devil and the Victorians : Supernatural Evil in Nineteenth-Century English Culture, (Taylor & Francis Group, 2021,)

Dyan Elliot, Fallen Bodies : Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)

David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, (Princeton University, 2006)

Ed. Joseph Laycock , Spirit Possession Around the World : Possession, Communion, and Demon Expulsion Across Cultures, (ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2015).

Catherine Rider, Magic and Religion in Medieval England, (Reaktion Books, Limited, 2012).

Cheryl Wicks, with Lorraine and Ed Warren, Ghost Tracks: What History, Science, and 50 Years of Field Research Have Revealed about Ghosts, Evil, and Life After Death (Graymalkin Media, 2016).

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Birth Series. Episode #4 of 4. In his occupation as a swineherd, Jacob Nufer had performed countless genital surgeries on his pigs. He was an expert gelder. He was convinced he could deliver his child abdominally so that both his wife and child would survive. For this, there was no precedence. Most observers must have believed that Jacob was about to murder his wife and that his child might already be dead. Few people would have had confidence in his success. But Jacob was desperate. Using his gelding tools, Jacob made an incision in his wife’s abdomen, with no anesthesia and rudimentary sanitation, to deliver his infant daughter. Shockingly, the historical record asserts that both mother and child survived the operation. Even more shocking, Elizabeth is recorded as having five more children, all delivered vaginally. Their baby born by cesarean also thrived. She lived to the ripe old age of 77. This is the first recorded incidence of a cesarean section performed where both the mother and child survived the procedure. Or is it? You’ll have to keep listening to find out. Today we’re discussing the surprisingly long history of cesarean birth in western medicine.

Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org

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Birth Series #3 of 4. Childbirth is such a routine part of life that in some ways it can become invisible, especially historically. History, people often assume, is made up of major events, political elections, wars, etc. – not routine biological processes. But for something so invisible, it has made up a significant portion of the lives of women across time. Through American history, birthing women have advocated for the right to shape their own birth experiences, whether through home births surrounded by female kin or hospital births under twilight sleep. And the choices our foremothers made aren’t always the ones we might guess. Today, we present a history of childbirth in America.

Bibliography

Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

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Birth Series. Episode #2 of 4. The 1915 silent-film The Birth of a Nation is one of the most popular and controversial films ever made. It’s success catapulted director D.W. Griffith into stardom while cementing the film, a piece of racist propaganda, into the annals of film history. It’s an amazing film with a horrifying message, which claimed that America’s rebirth after the Civil War was possible only through the power of white supremacy. The Birth of a Nation is still studied in film schools because of Griffith’s early use of dramatic camera and editing techniques. In 1992 the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Archives because it was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” But why was such a blatantly racist film so popular and why is it still relevant today? That’s what we hope to shed light on in this episode. Let’s dive in….

Find transcripts and show notes at: www.digpodcast.org

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Birth Series, Episode #1 of 4. Symphysiotomy. Probably not a word you’ve heard before - and if you have, I’m sorry? Symphysiotomy is an obstetric procedure in which a person’s pubic symphysis cartilage is cut to widen the pelvis for childbirth. Yes. Gross. I know. For most of the 19th century, symphysiotomy was a new solution to difficult births, and, to some doctors, preferable to Caesarean section, and certainly to the gruesome craniotomy. By the 1930s, though, in countries where childbirth had been medicalized, the symphysiotomy was phased out in favor of the safer C section - except Ireland. While surgical solutions to difficult childbirths increased in American and European obstetrics throughout the twentieth-century generally, it was only in Ireland that the use of symphysiotomy increased. Why, for the love of God, WHY, you ask? Let’s dig in.

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Cara Delay, “The Torture Began”: Symphysiotomy and Obstetric Violence in Modern Ireland, Nursing Clio, May 31, 2016

Cara Delay and Beth Sundstrom, “The Legacy Of Symphysiotomy In Ireland: A Reproductive Justice Approach To Obstetric Violence,” Reproduction, Health, and Medicine: Advances in Medical Sociology, Volume 20, 197-218 (2020).

Marie O’Connor, Bodily Harm Report: Symphysiotomy and Pubiotomy in Ireland, 1944-1992, (2011) 

Adrian Wilson, Ritual and Conflict: the Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England, (Taylor & Francis Group, 2013).

Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (Harvard University Press, 1995).

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Border Series. Episode #4 of 4. In 1919, the idealistic American President Woodrow Wilson brought with him to the Paris Peace Conference his 14 Points. Among these points were the doctrine of self-determination (the idea that all peoples have the right to determine the nature of their own governance) and an idea for a coalition that enhanced international security (the League of Nations). While progressives lauded Wilson’s ideas in principle, the European powers who had won The Great War were skeptical and bitter. Unlike the United States, Britain and France had suffered immensely during the war and they wanted reparations for their losses. Moreover, most of the officials who made up the French and British states were not ready to surrender their empires. Even though anti-colonial movements had gained strength during the war, they were still the minority, and very few activists were in positions of power. To limit colonial power in a world that was apprehensive about it, a liberalized colonial schematic was created and called a mandate. The mandate would be granted by an international coalition that would be known as the League of Nations. These events transformed the peace-making process into something that was quite different from those of the past… or WAS it? We’ll soon find out! This week, as part of our border series, we’re telling the story of France’s League of Nations mandates in Syria and Lebanon.

Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org

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Borders #3 of 4. If we look for women of color in national women’s rights organizations before the 1970s, we don’t see very many. Once it was assumed that women of color did not participate in twentieth century feminism. Of course that wasn’t the case at all and the historical record is righting itself, as historians and other social scientists complicate the narrative of twentieth century feminism, arguing that feminisms were at play. Sociologist Benita Roth even titles her book Separate Roads to Feminism, showing that women of color acted in feminist ways but were not largely involved with national and white feminist organizations. Historian Cynthia Orozco has a new book out titled Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican-American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist, which excavates the importance of a feminist figure of the Mexican American Civil Rights movement, adding to the scholarship that unearths the “forgotten” history of women’s importance in major American social movements. In today’s episode we’ll be exploring the Mexican-American Civil Rights movement of the early to mid-twentieth century and two women important to that movement, Adela Sloss-Vento and Alicia Dickerson Montemayor, whose work to establish women as authoritative figures in the Mexican American Civil Rights movement paved the way for the Chicana Movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Find a transcript, complete bibliography, and teaching resources at digpodcast.org

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Hernandez, Kelly Lytle. Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. University of California Press. 2010.

Kaplowitz, Craig A. LULAC, Mexican Americans, and National Policy. Texas A&M University. 2005.

Márquez, Benjamín. LULAC: The Evolution of a Mexican American Political Organization. University of Texas.1993.

Ngai, Mai. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton University Press. 2004.

Orozco, Cynthia E. No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed: The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement. University of Texas Press. 2009.

Orozco, Cynthia E. Agent of Change: Adela Sloss-Vento, Mexican American Civil Rights Activist and Texas Feminist. University of Texas Press. 2020.

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