Dr Julia Martins is a historian of the body, an activist, and an unapologetic bookworm (she is the host of My Body, My Book Club — an online feminist book club). She is also an Activism Outreach Supporter with The Vavengers.
Read more about Julia →Latest Articles
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Was the "Worst Nun in History" in Love with a Woman?
Sor Juana's love poems to the Vicereine of New Spain are intense, intimate, and still debated by scholars centuries later.
The Dark Family Secret Hidden Inside The Red Shoes
How Andersen's childhood, class shame, and strict Lutheran faith shaped his darkest fairy tale.
Why The Secret Agent is the Most Important Brazilian Film Right Now
Two Brazilian historians explore Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent and Brazil's unfinished reckoning with its military dictatorship.
What Hamnet Gets Right (And Historians Got Wrong)
Did parents in the past love their children? Explore the historical debate on parental love and grief that Hamnet brings to life so powerfully.
She Became a Nun Just to Avoid Marriage (and Read Books)
Meet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 'worst nun in history'—who chose the convent over marriage to build a library and defend women's right to learn.
Below Stairs at Christmas: A Victorian Servant Speaks
Read Hannah Cullwick's 1863 diary—a Victorian maid-of-all-work reveals the exhausting reality of Christmas below stairs.
Was the "Worst Nun in History" in Love with a Woman?
Sor Juana's love poems to the Vicereine of New Spain are intense, intimate, and still debated by scholars centuries later.
The Dark Family Secret Hidden Inside The Red Shoes
How Andersen's childhood, class shame, and strict Lutheran faith shaped his darkest fairy tale.
Why The Secret Agent is the Most Important Brazilian Film Right Now
Two Brazilian historians explore Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent and Brazil's unfinished reckoning with its military dictatorship.
What Hamnet Gets Right (And Historians Got Wrong)
Did parents in the past love their children? Explore the historical debate on parental love and grief that Hamnet brings to life so powerfully.
She Became a Nun Just to Avoid Marriage (and Read Books)
Meet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the 'worst nun in history'—who chose the convent over marriage to build a library and defend women's right to learn.
Below Stairs at Christmas: A Victorian Servant Speaks
Read Hannah Cullwick's 1863 diary—a Victorian maid-of-all-work reveals the exhausting reality of Christmas below stairs.
Key Concepts
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What were the "Non-Naturals"?
Learn about the six non-naturals—air, food, sleep, exercise, evacuation, and emotions—that shaped preventive medicine for centuries.
What is the 'Doctrine of Signatures'?
Discover how Renaissance physicians believed plants revealed their healing powers through shape, color, and resemblance to body parts.
What is the ‘Wandering Womb’?
Discover the ancient Greek theory of the 'wandering womb'—an animal inside an animal, moving through the body in search of moisture.
Humoral Theory: How the Four Humours Shaped Medicine for 2,000 Years
Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile — the four humours formed the foundation of Western medicine from ancient Greece to the 18th century.
What is Gender History?
From Virginia Woolf's lament to second-wave feminism—discover how gender history emerged to challenge incomplete narratives and rewrite the past.
What is Cultural History?
Explore cultural history—not just the history of culture, but how people made meaning of their world through symbols, rituals, and everyday life.
What are Secrets of Women?
Discover 'secrets of women'—early modern medical recipes for conception, menstruation, and childbirth, hidden in the mysterious feminine body.
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