Linda Gregerson is the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She is an internationally recognized scholar in American and British literature, and she is also the author of six award-winning books of poetry. She was named as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her creative and scholarly works have ...

Aggressive criminal prosecution of unwed mothers who killed their newborns in early modern Europe (1550-1750) has led historians to assume that Europe was less tolerant of illegitimacy and infanticide than other pre-modern societies, including China and Japan. New research throws this assumption into question. In early modern Geneva, authorities often turned a blind eye to the untimely deaths and abandonment of unwanted bastards. These findings suggest that Europeans took a more practical approach to managing ...