America's first anti-sex trafficking law, the 1910 Mann Act, made it illegal to transport women over state lines for prostitution "or any other immoral purpose." It was meant to protect women and girls from being seduced or sold into sexual slavery. But, as Jessica Pliley illust…
As orphan asylums ceased to exist in the late twentieth century, interest in them dwindled as well. Yet, from the Civil War to the Great Depression, America's dependent children received more aid from orphan asylums than from any other means. The ideologies and institutions behi…
Biographical note: Michael Butter, University of Freiburg, Germany; Maurus Reinkowski, University of Basel, Switzerland. So far most scholars have studied conspiracy theories within national frameworks only. Focusing on the United States and the Middle East, two regions entangl…
Renaissance debates about politics and gender led to pioneering forms of poor relief, devised to help women get a start in life. These included orphanages for illegitimate children and forced labor in workhouses, but also women's shelters and early forms of maternity benefits, u…
Seventeenth-century New Englanders were not as busy policing their neighbors' behavior as Nathaniel Hawthorne or many historians of early America would have us believe. Keeping their own households in line occupied too much of their time. Under Household Government reveals the e…
Children's Chances urges a shift from focusing on survival to targeting children's full and healthy development. Drawing on comparative data on policies in 190 countries designed to combat poverty, discrimination, child labor, illiteracy, and child marriage, Heymann and McNeill …
"We are accustomed to thinking of torture as the needless infliction of cruelty by public officials, and we assume that lawyers and clinicians are best placed to speak about its causes and effects. However, it has not always been so. The category of torture is a very specific wa…
Biographical note: Michael Schwartz, Institut für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin und Universität Münster. Description for reader: Eine Publikation des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin. Ethnische "Säuberungen" sind die dunkle Kehrseite unserer modernen Demokratisierun…
The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders today, yet reforms to reduce the number of people in U.S. jails and prisons have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, a carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment, extending its reach far beyon…