Welcome to our blog.
May 22, 2023
PhD Candidate Alex Parry published in ISIS!
Please join us in congratulating PhD Candidate Alex Parry on publication in the latest issue of ISIS of his article, “Delivering Bacteriology to the American Homemaker: Correspondence Education, Kitchen Experiments, and Public Health, 1890–1930.”
Congrats Alex!
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/725048
Abstract
Over the course of the Progressive Era, revised scientific accounts of the connections between dust, germs, and disease recast debates over public health. The American School of Home Economics and other institutions affiliated with the emerging subfield of household bacteriology regarded detecting and eliminating pathogens as necessary means to achieve safer homes and communities. Although several historians have attributed the rise of early twentieth-century technocracy and the decline of grassroots health activism to germ theory, household bacteriology complicates this standard narrative. Educators like Sophronia Maria Elliott (1854–1942) rejected the command-and-control tactics of the “new” public health and instead instructed women how to culture microorganisms and to measure the risks of infection within their surrounding environments using kitchen experiments. Household bacteriologists aspired to train “sanitary citizens” with the right and the duty to test for germs with everyday equipment, to prevent disease with effective housekeeping, and to advocate for policies and infrastructure to keep society well.
Congratulations to HoM Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Antoine Johnson, who just won the 2023 Pressman-Burroughs Award from the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM)! This well-deserved early career award recognizes Antoine’s exceptional promise!
Pressman Award
Jack D. Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Development
Award in 20th Century History of Medicine or Biomedical Sciences
This award honors Jack D. Pressman, Ph.D., a distinguished historian of medicine and Associate Professor of the History of the Health Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco at the time of his early and unexpected death in June 1997. The award and stipend of $1,000 is given yearly for outstanding work in twentieth-century history of medicine or medical biomedical sciences, as demonstrated by the completion of the Ph.D. and a proposal to turn the dissertation into a publishable monograph.
We’re Hiring!
The Department of the History of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine invites applications for tenure-track faculty at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor.
Description
The Department of the History of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine invites applications for tenure-track faculty at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor. The Department seeks to hire a historian of health and modern medicine in geographical or thematic areas not covered by existing Department faculty. We especially welcome candidates whose work includes a transnational or global dimension, who demonstrate innovative methodologies of historical research, who engage with the technological and material aspects of medical knowledge and practice, and who think in an integrated way about the history of science, technology and medicine and their place on both medical and arts & sciences campuses.
Our teaching remit stretches across several divisions of the University, including PhD and online MA students within our department’s degree-granting programs, MD and MPH students in the schools of medicine and public health, and undergraduates and graduate students in the Program of History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. In addition to excellence in historical scholarship and teaching, the successful candidate should also demonstrate a willingness to communicate the relevance of historical analysis with energy and enthusiasm to a variety of learners and audiences across Johns Hopkins and beyond. The Department of the History of Medicine is committed to diversity, equity, and justice; we seek candidates who will contribute to a climate that attracts and values students, faculty, and collaborators of all ethnicities, races, nationalities, and genders.
Qualifications
Applicants must have defended a Ph.D. by July 1, 2024.
Application Instructions
Applicants should submit through Interfolio (https://apply.interfolio.com/125130) a letter of application, C.V., statement of research interests, a sample syllabus, a chapter-length writing sample, and names and contact information for three references. Applicants must have defended a PhD by July 1, 2024. Applications and related materials are due by August 31, 2023, and letters of reference (if requested) will be due by October 1, 2023.
Search Committee Chair, Jeremy Greene, MD, PhD.