Alumni

Graduates of the Department of the History of Medicine (1990-present)

2022

Maya Kortezky

Currently finishing her MD training requirements. Maya’s graduate advisor was Jeremy Greene and her dissertation was entitled “Charity in the Crescent City: Constructing, Experiencing, and Remembering Modern Public Hospital Medicine in New Orleans 1880-1950.”

Anna Weerasinghe

Health Communications Fellow at FGS Global. Anna’s graduate advisor was Mary Fissell and her dissertation was entitled “Stuck Knowledge: Medicine and Immobility in Portuguese Goa, 1510-1759.”

2021

Ayah Nuriddin

Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Princeton University. Ayah’s graduate advisor was Nathaniel Comfort and her PhD thesis was titled  “Liberation Eugenics: African Americans and the Science of Black Freedom Struggles, 1890-1970”.

Samuel Scharff

Currently finishing his MD training requirements. Sam’s graduate advisors were Jeremy Greene and Nathaniel Comfort and his PhD thesis was titled “The Mask of Expertise: Hervey Cleckley, Psychiatry, and Law in 20th Century America.”

2019

Brian Po-huei Hsieh

PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Brian’s graduate advisor was Marta Hanson and his MA thesis was titled  “Paratextual Advantages of Versified Pulse Texts: The Theory and Practice of Wang Shuhe’s Rhymed Verses of Pulse-diagnostics in Chinese Medical History, 11th-17th centuries.”

James Flowers

Research Fellow (National Research Foundation of Korea), Kyung Hee University. James’s graduate advisor was Marta Hanson and his PhD thesis was titled “Koreans Building a New World: Eastern Medicine Renaissance in the Context of Japanese Rule, 1910-1945.”

Heidi Morefield

Post-doctoral Research Associate, Global Health Program, Princeton University. Heidi’s graduate advisor was Jeremy Greene and her PhD thesis was titled “Developing to Scale: Appropriate Technology and the Making of Global Health.”

2018

Kirsten Moore-Sheeley

Fellow in the History of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai. Kirsten’s graduate advisor was Randall Packard and her PhD thesis was titled “Nothing but Nets: The History of Insecticide-Treated Nets in Africa, 1980s-Present.”

2017

Eli Anders

Visiting Assistant Professor and Fellow in the Writing Program, Haverford College. Eli’s graduate advisor was Graham Mooney and his PhD thesis was titled “Between Hospital and Home: English Convalescent Care from Nightingale to the National Health Service.”

Julia Cummiskey

Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. Julia’s graduate advisor was Randall Packard and her PhD thesis was titled “Placing Global Science in Africa: International Networks, Local Places, and Virus Research in Uganda, 1936-2000.”

2016

Seth LeJacq

Lecturing Fellow in the Thompson Writing Program, Duke University. Seth’s graduate advisor was Mary Fissell and his PhD thesis was titled “Run Afoul: Sodomy, Masculinity, and the Body in the Georgian Royal Navy.”

Justin Rivest

Research Associate, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. Justin’s graduate advisor was Gianna Pomata and his PhD thesis was titled “Secret Remedies and the Rise of Pharmaceutical Monopolies in France during the First Global Age.”

Marion Schmidt

Affliated Research Partner, University College Freiburg Division for Science and Technology Studies. Marion’s graduate advisor was Nathaniel Comfort and her PhD thesis was titled “Genetic Normalcy and the Normalcy of Difference: Hereditary Deafness Research in 20th Century America.”

Alicia Puglionesi

Post-doctoral fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Alicia’s graduate advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was titled “The Astonishment of Experience: Americans and Psychical Research, 1885-1935.” Her revised PhD thesis was published as Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020).

2014

Lisa Bob

Lisa’s graduate advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was titled “Observing from the Margins: James Parkinson and the Shaking Palsy.”

Katherine Arner

History Department, The Park School, Baltimore. Katherine’s graduate advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was titled “The Malady of Revolutions: Yellow Fever in the Atlantic World, 1793-1828.”

2011

Sandra Eder

Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California at Berkeley. Sandra’s graduate advisor was Nathaniel Comfort and her PhD thesis was titled “The Birth of Gender: Clinical Encounters with Hermaphroditic Children at Johns Hopkins (1940-1956).” Sandra has also been a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Zürich.

Abby Markoe

Director, Squashwise, Baltimore.  Abby’s graduate advisor was Randall Packard and her MA thesis was entitled “Children in Copper Belt History, 1930-1970.”

2010

Susan Lamb

Jason A. Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, University of Ottawa. Susan’s advisor was Daniel Todes and her PhD thesis was titled “Pathologist of the Mind: Adolf Meyer, Psychobiology and the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1908– 1917.” Her revised PhD thesis was published as: Pathologist of the Mind: Adolf Meyer and the Origins of American Psychiatry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Susan was a Post-doctoral fellow at McGill University from 2010 to 2015.

Massimo Petrozzi

AV & Digital Processing Archivist, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA. Massimo received his MLS from University of Maryland, College Park, in 2015. At JHU, Massimo’s advisor was Mary Fissell and his PhD thesis was “Touching the Body of the Animal: Studying Animals in Early Modern Florence, 1650-1700.”

Olivia Weisser

Assistant Professor of History, University of Massachussetts, Boston. Oliva’s advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was “Gender and Illness in Seventeenth-Century England.” Her revised PhD thesis was published as: Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).

Andrew Nelson

Andrew’s advisor was Gianna Pomata and his MA thesis was “Martínez in the Arena: Anatomy and Authorship in Early 18th-Century Madrid.”

Pierce Salguero

Associate Professor of Asian History and Religious studies at Penn State Abington. Pierce’s advisor was Marta Hanson and his PhD thesis was entitled “Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China: Disease, Healing, and the Body in Crosscultural Translation (2nd to 8th Centuries C.E.).” His revised PhD thesis was published as: Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). With Columbia University Press, he edited and published two related anthologies: Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources  (2017) and Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Sources (2019).

2009

Melissa Grafe

John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History, Yale University. Melissa’s advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was entitled “Making ‘Medical Hall’: Dr. John Archer, Medical Practice, and Apprenticeship in Early America, 1769-1820.”

2008

James A. Schafer

Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Houston. James’s advisor was Harry Marks and his revised PhD thesis has been published as The Business of Private Medical Practice: Doctors, Specialization, and Urban Change in Philadelphia, 1900-1940 (Rutgers University Press, 2013).

2007

Barbara Chubak

Assistant Professor of Urology, Mt Sinai, New York.  Barbara’s advisor was Mary Fissell and her MA thesis was titled “Unmade Men: Impotence in Eighteenth-Century England.” She had a Cleveland Fellowship in Advanced Bioethics, Cleveland Clinic, 2008-2010; and was a Resident in Urology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City.

2006

Alexa Green

Alexa’s advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was called “The Market Cultures of William Beaumont: Ethics, Science, and Medicine in Antebellum America, 1820-1865.”

Nancy L. Medley

Researcher with the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group at Liverpool Women’s Hospital. Nancy’s advisor was Harry Marks and her MA thesis was entitled “Women’s Biography in the Practice of Franklin P. Mall’s Human Embryology, 1900-1918.”

2004

Lloyd Ackert

Associate Teaching Professor of History, Drexel University, Pennsylvania.  Lloyd’s advisor was Daniel Todes and his revised PhD thesis has been published as Sergei Vinogradsky and the Cycle of Life: From the Thermodynamics of Life to Ecological Microbiology,1850-1950 (Springer Publishers: Archimedes series, 2013).

Jesse Bump

Lecturer on Global Health Policy in the Department of Global Health and Population, and Executive Director of the Takemi Program in International Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Jesse’s advisor was Harry Marks and his PhD thesis was titled “The Lion’s Gaze: African River Blindness from Tropical Curiosity to International Development.”

2003

Susan J. Ferry

Susan’s advisor was Mary Fissell and her PhD thesis was entitled “Bodily Knowledge: Female Body Culture and Subjectivity in Manchester, 1870-1900.”

William Harry York

Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies (Humanities), Honors Program, Portland State University. Harry’s advisor was Jerome Bylebyl and his PhD thesis was entitled “Evidence and Theory in Medical Practice During the Later Middle Ages: Valesco de Tarenta (FL. 1382-1426) at the Court of Foix.” He is the author of Health and Wellness in Antiquity Through the Middle Ages (Santa Barbara, Calif. : Greenwood, 2012).

Kathleen M. Crowther

Associate Professor of History of Science, University of Oklahoma.  Kathleen’s advisor was Mary Fissell, her PhD thesis was “Creating Adam and Eve: Body, Soul, and Gender in 16th century Germany.”  She is the author of Adam and Eve in the Protestant Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), which was awarded the Gerald Strauss Prize by the Sixteenth-Century Society.

2000

Melody R. Herr

Head, Office of Scholarly Communications at the University of Arkansas. Melody’s advisor was Daniel Todes and her PhD thesis was “Communities of American Archaeology: Identity in the Era of Professionalization”. She is the author of Summer of Discovery (University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

Laura Davidow Hirshbein

Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan. Laura’s advisor was Harry Marks and her PhD thesis was entitled “The Transformation of Old Age: Expertise, Gender and National Identity, 1900-1950”. She is the author of American Melancholy: Constructions of Depression in the Twentieth Century (Rutgers University Press, 2009).

1999

Trudy Eden

Professor of History, University of Northern Iowa. Trudy’s advisor was Gert Brieger and her thesis was entitled “‘Makes Like, Makes Unlike’: Food, Health, and Identity in the Early Chesapeake”. She is the author of The Early American Table: Food and Society in the New World (Northern Illinois University Press, 2010).

1997

Walton O. Schalick III

Clinical Adjunct Assistant, Orthopedics and Rehabilitation, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Walt’s advisor was Jerome Bylebyl and his PhD thesis was called “Add One Part Pharmacy to One Part Surgery and One Part Medicine; Jean De St. Amand and the Development of Medical Pharmacology in Thirteenth Century Paris”. He is co-editor of the Disability History series of Manchester University Press.

1996

Chandak Sengoopta

Professor of History, Birkbeck College, London. Chandak’s advisor was Daniel Todes and his revised PhD thesis was published as Otto Weininger: Sex, Science and Self in Imperial Vienna (University of Chicago Press, 2000). He is also the author of The Most Secret Quintessence of life: Sex, Glands, and Hormones, 1850-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and Imprint of the Raj: How Fingerprinting was Born in Colonial India (MacMillan, 2003).

Kimberly A. Pelis

Writer, Office of NIH Director’s Communications.  Kimberly’s advisor was Daniel Todes and her revised PhD was published as Charles Nicolle: Pasteur’s Imperial Missionary (University of Rochester Press, 2006).

1994

Howard Markel

George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine; Founding Director, Center for the History of Medicine; Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, History, Health Policy and Management, Psychiatry, and English Literature, The University of Michigan. Howard’s advisor was Gert Brieger and his revised thesis was published as Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1999). He is also the author of When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics that have Invaded America and The Fears They Have Unleashed (Vintage, 2005); and An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted and the Miracle Drug Cocaine (Pantheon, 2011).

1991

Jane Eliot Sewell

(deceased) Jane’s advisor was Daniel Todes and her PhD thesis was entitled “Bountiful Bodies: Spencer Wells, Lawson Tait, and the Birth of British Gynecology”. She was author of Medicine in Maryland: The Practice and the Profession, 1799-1999 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and co-author with Louis Galambos of Networks of Innovation: Vaccine Development at Merck, Sharpe & Dohme, and Mulford, 1895-1995 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).