History of Medicine and Health

Please set your timezone at https://www.chstm.org/user

Consortium Respectful Behavior Policy

Participants at Consortium activities will treat each other with respect and consideration to create a collegial, inclusive, and professional environment that is free from any form of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.

Participants will avoid any inappropriate actions or statements based on individual characteristics such as age, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, nationality, political affiliation, ability status, educational background, or any other characteristic protected by law. Disruptive or harassing behavior of any kind will not be tolerated. Harassment includes but is not limited to inappropriate or intimidating behavior and language, unwelcome jokes or comments, unwanted touching or attention, offensive images, photography without permission, and stalking.

Participants may send reports or concerns about violations of this policy to conduct@chstm.org.

Upcoming Meetings

There are no currently scheduled upcoming events.


Past Meetings

  • February 16, 2018

    Elaine LaFay presented  “‘The slandered torrid zone’: Medicine, Botany, and the Imperial Vision of an American Tropics along the U.S. Gulf Coast, 1820–1840,” a chapter from her dissertation.
     
    Melanie Kiechle, assistant professor of history at  Virginia Tech, has agreed to contribute a comment.
     
    A copy of the discussion paper is uploaded to the Medicine and Health Work Group site.
     
    LaFay is a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and currently a Marguerite Bartlett Hamer Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
     


  • November 17, 2017

    Daniel Goldberg (University of Colorado, Denver): “‘The Evidence of the Lost Eye was so Palpable’: The Testimonial Significance of Visible Disabilities in Civil War Veterans’ Encounters with the North Carolina Pension Act of 1885”


  • October 20, 2017

    Tamara Venit-Shelton (Claremont McKenna College): “Herbs and Roots Only: Toward an Environmental History of Chinese Medicine in the United States.”
    Comments by:
    Linda L. Barnes, Boston University
    Mei Zhan, University of California Irvine.


  • September 15, 2017

    Averyl Gaylor (La Trobe University in Melbourne): “Dance and Operational Bodily Encounters in Twentieth-Century Australia.” On the interplay between modern dance and modern medical cultures in shaping understandings and ideals of the body in Australia, in the early to mid twentieth-century. Comment by Dr. Whitney Laemmli, Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University.


  • April 21, 2017

    Joanna Radin, from the Program in History of Science & Medicine, Yale University, presented “Latent Life in Biomedicine’s Ice Age,” the first chapter of her new book, Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (Chicago, 2017). Susan Lederer, University of Wisconsin, provided commentary.


  • March 17, 2017

    Beth Linker (University of Pennsylvania) discussed Huddled Masses: The Making of a Poor Posture Epidemic in America.   Comments by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Professor Emerita, Cornell University and Carla Bittel, Associate Professor, Loyola Marymount University.


  • February 17, 2017

    Terence Keel (UC—Santa Barbara) and Osagie Obasogie (UC—Berkeley) in a virtual meet-and-greet on the origins and current projects of their working group on critical race theory and the health sciences.


  • January 27, 2017

    *Note Special Date*

    Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, presented a paper on cancer and aging in India and South Africa.


  • November 18, 2016

    Merlin Chowkwanyun, Donald H. Gamson Chair in the History and Ethics of Public Health in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health presented a paper, "Is Small Always Beautiful? Is Community Always Great? Re-thinking the Big, Bad Academic Medical Center (1960-1980)" Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Gallatin School, New York University provided a comment.


  • April 15, 2016

    Dora Vargha (Birkbeck College, University of London, and 2015–2016 Consortium for HSTM Research Fellow) will present “After the End of Polio: Local and Global Consequences of Disease Elimination.” Daniel Wilson (Mulhenberg College) will provide commentary to start the discussion.