Medicine, Disability and Science
Historical anatomical figures from Claude Bernard, Précis iconographique de médecine opératoire et d'anatomie chirurgicale / Wellcome Library
Exploring health, knowledge and lived experience
Research in medicine, disability and science examines how scientific and medical knowledge is created, circulated and contested across time and place. Faculty in the Department of History study not only institutions and ideas, but also the lived experiences of people shaped by medicine, technology and systems of care. This work helps students understand how science and medicine intersect with power, identity and social change.
Great for students interested in health, public policy, disability studies, gender, science, ethics or social justice.
Research in medicine, disability and science explores questions such as:
- Who decides what counts as scientific or medical knowledge?
- How have ideas about the body changed over time?
- How have race, gender and class shaped access to health care?
- How have disabled people challenged medical authority?
- How do public health systems reflect broader social values?
- How do debates about drugs, addiction and regulation evolve?
These questions connect historical inquiry to urgent contemporary conversations about health and inequality.
Historians in this area draw on diverse sources, including:
- Medical case records and hospital archives
- Public health reports and policy documents
- Scientific publications and laboratory materials
- Personal narratives and oral histories
- Legal and regulatory records
Research often bridges institutions and everyday life, tracing how knowledge moves between laboratories, hospitals, homes and communities. Scholars examine how people experienced these systems differently depending on race, gender, class and ability.
Students may conduct archival research, analyze policy debates or explore interdisciplinary methods that connect history with disability studies, gender studies and science studies.
Together, these interdisciplinary areas highlight the department’s range of approaches and give students multiple entry points into the history of health, knowledge and the body.
Sub-fields
This research examines how ideas about masculinity, femininity and sexual identity developed over time and shaped family life, labor, politics and medicine.
Scholars study how norms surrounding bodies and relationships were created, challenged and redefined.
Faculty working in this area:
Alfred Palmer, "Rosie the Riveter"
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
Faculty examine how scientific knowledge is produced, circulated and challenged. Research explores laboratories, expertise, experimentation and the relationship between science, politics and society.
Students learn how scientific authority is constructed and how it evolves.
Faculty working in this area:
Humboldt and Bonplant in the Jungle
Public Domain Wikimedia Commons
This area explores how societies have understood health, illness and the body. Faculty study medical education, patient experiences, public health systems and the cultural meanings of disease.
This work shows medicine as a social and historical practice shaped by context and power.
Faculty working in this area:
Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic, 1889
Public Domain Wikimedia Commons
Disability history centers the experiences of people whose bodies and minds did not fit dominant norms. Faculty examine how disability has been defined, regulated and lived, and how disabled people have shaped their own histories.
This research emphasizes access, agency and voice.
Faculty working in this area:
Patients at a sanitorium in Indiana, 1926
Wellcome Collection
This research investigates regulation, addiction and social attitudes toward substances. Faculty examine how law, medicine and culture shaped the use and control of drugs and alcohol in different historical contexts.
This work connects history to contemporary debates about public health and policy
Faculty working in this area:
People's Drug Store located at 8th and H Streets, NE in Washington, D.C.
Public Domain Wikimedia Commons
Medicine, disability and science offers rich opportunities for students at all levels. You can engage through coursework and research seminars, independent study, archival and digital research projects or interdisciplinary collaborations