Welcome to Bitchy History

Please Keep Your Hands, Feet, and Patriarchal Assumptions Inside the Vehicle

Hello, new subscribers!

There are suddenly a lot more of you here, which is exciting, flattering, and slightly alarming in the way that realizing people are actually reading your thoughts on purpose always is.

So I thought it was probably time to do a proper welcome post. Think of this as the little brochure you get at the entrance to a museum, except instead of a quiet map of the Renaissance wing, it comes with strong opinions about gender, media, politics, and the historical crimes of the American nuclear family.

Welcome to Bitchy History.

I’m Professor Meredith. I’m a historian, writer, podcaster, graduate student, former history professor, and general menace to oversimplified narratives. I have a background in history, a master’s degree in Global and Colonial History, and I previously taught history at the college level, which means I have spent a truly heroic amount of time explaining that no, history is not just memorizing dates, and yes, context does actually matter. I’m currently working on my MA in Gender Studies, and in October, I’ll also be starting my PhD, because apparently I looked at academia and thought, “Yes, I would like more of this, but with higher stakes and worse sleep.”

Some of my former students are lurking in the subscriptions. Apparently they liked my pedantry enough to want to get hit with it regularly without a grade riding on it.

My work lives in the strange, fascinating, deeply cursed intersection of gender, politics, media, cultural history, and power.

Which is a very academic way of saying: I spend a lot of time asking why society is like this, who benefits from it being like this, and why so many people keep trying to blame feminism for problems that were clearly installed by patriarchy, capitalism, empire, and a casserole dish.

My research interests include women’s history, gender studies, cultural history, Cold War history, media history, political nostalgia, reproductive politics, science fiction, and the many ways popular culture teaches us what to believe before we realize we are being taught anything at all.

I write a lot about the 1950s, not because I believe it was a golden age, but because I believe it was one of America’s most successful marketing campaigns. The perfect housewife, the cheerful nuclear family, the benevolent father, the happy consumer home, the kitchen as destiny: all of these things were packaged, sold, televised, and then later weaponized by people who would very much like us to confuse propaganda with tradition.

So if you are interested in how sitcoms trained Americans to find hierarchy comforting, how domesticity became a political project, how “traditional values” often means “historical fanfiction with a production budget,” you are in the right place.

I also write about science fiction, because science fiction is where societies go to have nervous breakdowns about themselves in space. I love Star Trek, Babylon 5, and stories that use aliens, empires, time travel, and suspiciously attractive revolutionaries to ask very real questions about war, race, gender, fascism, colonialism, morality, and hope.

Basically, if someone has ever said, “It’s just a TV show,” I have probably already prepared a 3,000-word rebuttal.

Around here, you will find essays, podcast updates, historical deep dives, cultural criticism, political analysis, media analysis, feminist rage, jokes that got out of hand, and occasional dispatches from the haunted attic of American memory.

Some recurring themes include:

The myth of the “traditional family.”

The politics of nostalgia.

Women’s history and the long, exhausting career of misogyny.

The historical roots of modern right-wing gender politics.

Reproductive justice and the policing of bodies.

Pop culture as political (mis)education.

Science fiction as cultural critique.

The Cold War, empire, propaganda, and all the little ways power tries to make itself look normal.

And because this is Bitchy History, the tone is generally: historically grounded, politically irritated, emotionally invested, and occasionally standing in the ruins of someone’s bad argument holding a shovel.

Now, a note about paid subscriptions.

I do not put most of my work behind a paywall because I do not believe knowledge should be gatekept. I do not want the people who most need historical context, political analysis, or feminist media critique to hit a little digital tollbooth and be told, “Sorry, knowledge is for premium members only.”

That feels rude. Also, deeply on-brand for the systems I spend most of my time yelling about.

So the majority of what I publish will remain free. That matters to me. History should be accessible. Analysis should be accessible. The tools for understanding power should not only be available to people with disposable income and a fondness for monthly subscriptions.

That said, if you enjoy my work and you are in a position to support it financially, paid subscriptions are very welcome and deeply appreciated. They help me keep researching, writing, podcasting, and producing the kind of work that requires time, books, databases, caffeine, and the occasional emotional support pastry.

They also help support the broader ecosystem of my work while I continue graduate study, prepare for doctoral research, and attempt to keep all my academic, creative, and public history projects from forming one giant sentient paper pile in the corner of my office.¹

Think of a paid subscription less as “unlocking exclusive content” and more as tossing a coin to your local feminist historian so she can continue wandering through the archives with a torch and a suspicious expression.

No pressure. No guilt. No velvet rope.

Just support, if you can and want to.

Whether you are here as a free subscriber, a paid subscriber, a longtime reader, a new arrival, a fellow history gremlin, a feminist killjoy, a science fiction nerd, or someone who simply looked around at the state of the world and thought, “Surely there is historical precedent for this nonsense,” I am glad you are here.

Bitchy History is a place for people who want context. People who want the receipts. People who understand that the past is not dead, it is just standing behind us in a novelty apron whispering bad policy ideas into the present.

So welcome.

Pour yourself something caffeinated, alcoholic, herbal, or otherwise emotionally stabilizing.

We have a lot to unpack.

And unfortunately, history packed most of it in asbestos-lined luggage.

1. Calling it an office is aspirational. I live in 160 square feet of apartment and I can touch my bed from my desk chair.