Welcome to Wanton Republic, where history gets undressed.
I’m Stephanie, a budding historian and writer with a thing for scandal, passion, and the parts of the past that don’t make it into textbooks. Here, we talk about the sex lives, love affairs, power plays, and secret rendezvous of early America’s most fascinating figures.
From steamy letters written during wartime to brothels with political clientele, Wanton Republic is for people who like their history with a twist.
The past isn’t dead. It’s just been redacted.
Subscribe if you believe that history isn’t just political…it’s personal.
🗝 Expect:
Seductive deep-dives into real historical lovers, scandals, and secrets
Commentary on desire, power, and gender through a historical lens
Wit, irreverence, laughs, community, and real research
Come for the gossip. Stay for the footnotes.
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Wanton Republic is a space for grown-ups who like truth with a little tease.
Who am I?
I’m an educator, writer, and history NERD working toward a graduate degree in history. I begin my studies this July! I intend to specialize in the American Revolution and the early republic, with a particular interest in espionage, women’s roles, and social deviance. My background is in fiction writing, article writing, and academia, and this project is where those passions collide.
I didn’t start Wanton Republic because I thought sex sells. I started it because I couldn’t stop thinking about the silences. The erased lovers, the letters burned or hidden. As a writer and historian, I’ve always been drawn to the role of passion and love in the choices that people make. Growing up, I was taught that history was about war and legislation. But I knew instinctively it was also about longing, shame, risk, seduction, and survival. Wanton Republic is my attempt to center those truths. It’s a love letter to the people, especially the women, whose passions helped shape a nation, even when they weren’t allowed to shape the narrative.
History is something that I have always thought about and researched, obsessively so. Even as a child, history was one of three primary interests in my life. (The other two were writing and talking until people begged me to stop.) I’ve learned recently, in studying my birth chart, that my 12th house says I’m destined to uncover hidden histories. I mean, if the cosmos say I gotta do this…then what choice do I really have? I’m also endlessly fascinated by America’s relationship to sex. Our media consumption is so hyper sexual, but then we turn around and tell people, mostly young women, “well don’t actually DO THAT.”
That’s a post for another day.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re here :)
Love,
Stephanie
