Matilda Joslyn Gage, who wrote about how cumulative advantage (a principle not named until a century later) erased women and their achievements from history, was herself erased from history because of cumulative advantage. The reason why You Don’t Know Matilda involves the Bible and science.

Learning about Swedish history and culture can be as easy as looking in your wallet. Each banknote you carry has a story to tell about a famous figure from modern Swedish history on one side, and a geographical area of Sweden closely connected to his or her life on the other.

If there's no guide book to parenting, there's definitely no guide book to parenting as an immigrant in Sweden. Sure, there's tons of advice to be found. Practical resources are also usually available. And, of course, there are numerous groups for immigrants and expats. These are all great and valuable tools for some of the practical and emotional aspects of parenting, but when it comes to the immediate realities I am confronted with every day as an immigrant parent, I’ve found they have limited usefulness.

Trump is what we might call a “pecuniary barbarian”: a member of the financial and social elite who, in the theory of Progressive Era economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, “is of a parasitic character, and [whose] interest is to divert what substance they may to their own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand.”

Visitors fixing their gaze on the imposing towers of the medieval cathedral in Lund, Sweden may not realize it, but 12 little heads are closely watching their every move. Created to represent the future of mankind, they peer out from a split in the protective cloak of the Skyddsmantelmadonnan sculpture.

With the launch today of the Biographical Dictionary of Swedish Women (SKBL), the University of Gothenburg has raised the profile of 1,000 socially-important women in Sweden's history and addressed a need for greater visibility of women role models. The launch coincides with International Women's Day, and the database makes good on this year's theme of #PressForProgress by seeking to redress women's continued underrepresentation in the annals of history.

How the dangerously powerful words of two of history’s original “nasty women,” Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft, were silenced, suppressed, and nearly lost to history. (First in series)

History has a way of being forgotten, whether by accident or design, especially when it’s painful. Histories with straightforward and happy endings make us feel good about ourselves and more hopeful about the outcome of our own uncertain times. Those that lack resolution or defy the need for an optimistic conclusion frequently exist in varying degrees of figurative darkness – ignored, neglected, forsaken. Sometimes, the darkness is also literal – a place so tucked away from view that the eyes of the collective consciousness barely need to look away to forget. Just such a place exists in Öreryd, Sweden, where a World War II refugee camp once stood. There, deep in the forests of Småland, the painful yet vitally-important history of 1,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps has been left to die in the woods.

What the treatment of two of history’s original “nasty women,” Mary Hays and Mary Darby Robinson, can tell us about how society has long consigned outspoken women to infamy or obliteration. (Second in series)

I'm often asked why we have made the conscious decision not to live in the United States. Most people laugh at the first answer I generally give, which involves a certain person currently residing in a large white house in Washington, D.C. The laughter always stops when I give my second reason: I already worry enough about my children that I don't want to live in fear that they will be gunned down in a mass shooting, at school or anywhere else.

When the son-in-law of POTUS 2 John Adams used the valuable government position he had gained through nepotism to help a Venezuelan friend start a revolution against Spain, he threatened a precarious peace between America and Spain, and endangered the lives of unsuspecting American citizens. Two centuries later, it’s a salient reminder of how nepotism and politics can be a disastrous combination.

On the evening of October 16, 1946, jewels belonging to the Duchess of Windsor were stolen from an English mansion where the exiled couple was visiting. Ever since that day, the story has been told by many different sources with everything from very minor discrepancies to significant differences in important facts and details. Biographers and journalists have hypothesized and speculated over the incident, but until the release of the official police case file at the National Archives at Kew in late 2003, details as critical as what pieces of jewelry were stolen have been unknown to all who have written on the subject. This article was one of the first to analyze that case file in depth.

As in England, where the number of historical establishments that claim, "Queen Victoria slept here," is legion, the same holds true in Scotland for Mary, Queen of Scots. In her relatively brief 45 years of life, Mary seems to have spent at least one night in just about every castle of note in Scotland. Between everyday living at her royal residences, numerous Scottish progressions, various attempts to escape a multitude of threats, and the early years of her imprisonment, she went from what we know today as familiar Scottish landmarks like Edinburgh Castle to near forgotten ruins like Spynie Palace in the Moray region of eastern Scotland. But if you think the Queen of Scots was busy in life, wait until you hear all the places she's reportedly "visited" in the afterlife.

Junk history is embodied perfectly in a recent viral meme that portrays a nineteenth-century Persian princess with facial hair alongside the claim that 13 men killed themselves over their unrequited love for her. While it fails miserably at historical accuracy, the meme succeeds at demonstrating how easily viral clickbait obscures and overshadows rich and meaningful stories from the past.

As the World Economic Forum suggests gender parity is 200 years away, a look at how researching and writing about women from the past 600 years give me purpose and motivation, and constantly remind me that another 200 years is far too long.

Almost 350 years after it was written, the feminist philosophy of François Poullain de la Barre still resonates on subjects like gender, prejudice, intersectionality, and the role of men in women’s fight for equality.

For immigrants in Sweden, it can feel at times like the normal daily routine offers precious few opportunities for cultural and historical immersion. This is doubly true for those raising a family. Between acclimating to new ways of doing things, learning the language, working and/or studying, setting up and maintaining a home, caring for children and prioritizing their needs, trying to squeeze in time with a partner, and maybe actually having a social life, it's no surprise that our knowledge of Swedish culture and history often goes woefully uncultivated.

Before Lady Liberty officially became “Mother of Exiles” in 1903 and subdued xenophobia with the help of her three dragons (sorry, wrong story, that was the Mother of Dragons), the tired and poor huddled masses arriving at America’s teeming shores were greeted less than enthusiastically by nineteenth century anti-immigration extremists. Creating a model that is now experiencing a renaissance, groups of mainly white, Protestant men calling themselves Nativists in honor of their “native” American heritage, and united in their belief that immigrants were taking their jobs, threatening democracy, and bent on imposing Papism, banded together to limit the rights of existing immigrants and slow the inflow of new immigrants.

Joan of Arc, Countess Emilia Plater, Wonder Woman: Singular women placed on a pedestal, carefully arranged and served on a silver platter of inimitable exceptionalism, meant to be admired for their sacrifice, but not duplicated. These are the flawed foundations of the stories of “heroic” women that have helped insure that the concept of the women warrior remains an anomaly more akin to a fictional superhero than an accepted reality.

"My children need the newest and best of everything," said someone who was not me. Don't get me wrong, my children are my precious angels whose needs I put before my own on a regular basis. They are also precious angels whose exuberant love of life means that almost nothing passes out of their possession in "gently used" condition. Which is why I have happily embraced Sweden's vibrant second-hand and upcycling market.