Dig: A History Podcast Recorded History Podcast Network

EGM's Book The Sentimental State. Episode #3 of 4. In 1923, Zitkala-Ša, a Dakota woman, wrote an unpublished essay titled "Our Sioux People," tracing the U.S. government's relationship with the tribe. She described a scene where delegates from the Pine Ridge reservation met with Mr. E. B. Merritt of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, DC. Zitkala-Ša quoted: "through all the pathos of their sad story, the sight of thier gaunt faces, their cheap and shabby civilian clothes which bespoke their poverty more than words, Mr. E. B. Merritt, Assistant Commissioner sat unmoved in his luxurious office, where walls were hung with bright colored paintings of primitive Indian folk and their teepees." Zitkala-Ša's complex political writing and activism added American Indian perspectives to women's political activism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We do this episode in honor of Elizabeth's new book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State.
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Elizabeth's Book, The Sentimental State #2 of 4. We’re talking about abortion and Ireland today. It’s hard for a lot of reasons. People shouldn’t have to fight so hard to make decisions for their own bodies. An unborn fetus should not have the same legal status as an adult woman. But we’re honoring Elizabeth’s book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State, with this series about women, activism, and reform. Elizabeth tells the history of American women, Black and white, who took the anxieties and ideals of the Progressive era and mobilized them to exact political change. Reading Elizabeth’s book reveals a lot about the welfare state today, but also, I think, is a kind of roadmap for collective action. For Irish women, and all people with uteruses, unwanted pregnancies left one with few choices until it was finally decriminalized in 2018. Two-thousand-and-eighteen. Barely six years ago. Today we’re looking at 100 years of Irish history, inclusive of both the north and south. And most of that history, and most of this episode, is painful. But from that pain came people, mostly women, taking care of each other and fighting for change. And from that collective action came reform. Today, women in both Northern Ireland and the Republic can legally obtain an abortion up to twelve weeks in their own country. Is it perfect? No, of course not. As Elizabeth’s book reminds us, reform never is. But it’s leaps and bounds better than it was. For our listeners in Texas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and 18 other US states, this episode will hit too close to home. But I hope it’s also a reminder that collective action works. We can have something, and lose it, and then get it back. We just need to fight for each other. So chin up. We can do this together.
Select Bibliography
Fran Amery, Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: The Changing Politics of Abortion in Britain (Bristol University Press, 2020).
Lindsay Earner-Byrne and Diane Urquhart, The Irish Abortion Journey, 1920-2018, (Palgrave Macmillian, 2019).
Jennifer Thompson, Abortion Law and Political Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Fiona Bloomer and Emma Campbell, Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Begoña Aretxaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton University Press, 1997)

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Celebrating Elizabeth's Book: Episode #1 of 4. Dear listener, we’ve got a special episode for you today. Our producer, Elizabeth Garner Masarik, just published her first book, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State. You can buy it on any major booksellers website as a paperback or ebook. So we are starting a series of women’s history episodes to celebrate the publication of her book. Today we’ll begin with an in-depth discussion of her book and its dominant themes. So sit back and enjoy our deep dive into Elizabeth’s book, The Sentimental State. 
Bibliography
Elizabeth Garner Masarik, The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024)
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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.
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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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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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