Beth Linker, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Department of History and Sociology of Science
365 Logan Hall, 249 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
E-mail
Professor Linker's homepage.
Ph.D., Yale University
M.A., Michigan State University
B.S., Ithaca College
Teaching Fields:
History of medicine, disability, American health policy, bioethics, public health; gender and health; history and sociology of medicalization
Research Fields:
Social and cultural history of U.S. medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries, disability history, war studies, gender studies, as well as the history of bioethics and health care policy.
Beth Linker received her Ph.D. in history from Yale University (2006). She also has an M.A. in bioethics from Michigan State University and a B.S. in physical therapy from Ithaca College. Her research and teaching interests include the social and cultural history of U.S. medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of the body, disability history, gender studies, as well as the history of bioethics and health care policy.
Current Projects:
- Her current projects include:
• The Roots of Rehabilitation: Reconstructing Disabled Soldiers in World War I America (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).
• Globalizing Disability: World War I and the Making of Modern Rehabilitation, co-edited with Heather Perry, Ph.D. (book proposal under review).
• Slouch: The Rise and Fall of American Posture in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America (work in progress).
Publications
"Strength and Science" J. of Women's History, Fall 2005. (225 KB)
“The Business of Ethics: Gender, Medicine, and the Professional Codification of the American Physiotherapy Association, 1918-1935,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 60 (July 2005). (188 KB)
"Resuscitating the ‘Great Doctor’: The Career of Biography in Medical History,” In Thomas Söderqvist, ed., Poetics of Biography in Science, Technology, and Medicine (Aldershoot: Ashgate Press), forthcoming 2007.
“Feet for Fighting: Locating Disability and Social Medicine in World War I America,” winner of the 2005 Roy Porter Student Essay Prize, Social History of Medicine, 20, no. 1 (April 2007).
CURRICULUM VITAE
Education
Ph.D., Department of History, Yale University, 2006.
M.Phil., Program in the History of Medicine and Science, Yale University, 2003.
M.A., Bioethics, Humanities, and Society, Michigan State University, 1999.
B.S., Physical Therapy, Ithaca College, 1992.
Selected Awards, Grants, and Fellowships
The Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program at Penn (2006).
Roy Porter Memorial Prize Essay, Society for the Social History of Medicine (2005).
John F. Enders Fellowship, Yale University (2005).
Wood Institute Research Fellowship, College of Physicians of Philadelphia (2004-2005).
Yale University Dissertation Fellowship (2004-2005).
Donaghue Initiative in Biomedical and Behavorial Research Ethics, Grant (2003-2006).
American Association for Bioethics and Humanities Student Essay Award (2002).
Selected Professional Presentations
European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, annual meeting, “Fallen Arches: Orthopedic Surgeons, Flat Feet, and the Making of Disability in World War I,” Paris, September 2005.
American Association for the History of Medicine, annual meeting, “Self-perceptions of Disability and Illness,” Panel Chair, Birmingham, Alabama, April 2005.
American Association for the History of Medicine, annual meeting, “‘Not Your Father’s Old-Time Medical History’: The New Disability History and its Claim to Authenticity,” Panel Organizer and Chair for Roundtable Workshop, Madison, May 2004.
American Historical Association, annual meeting, “Militarizing the Body: Prosthetics, Propaganda, and Medical Politics in Wartime Europe and the United States, 1914-9,” Panel Organizer, Washington, D.C., January 2004.
American Historical Association, annual meeting, “Picture Perfect: Representations, Medicine, and Consensus in Wartime America, 1918-1919,” Washington, D.C., January 2004.
American Medical Association, Ethics Standards Division, presented invited paper, “Codes of Ethics and the Allied Health Professions in Twentieth Century America,” Chicago, January 2003.
American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, annual meeting, “The Business of Ethics: Women in Medicine and the American Physiotherapy Association’s 1935 Code of Ethics,” Baltimore, October 2002.
University of Copenhagen, invited paper, “Great Doctors, Great Scientists: The Career of Biography in the History of Medicine and Science,” at the Poetics of Biography in Science, Technology, and Medicine Conference (program directors, Janet Browne and Thomas Söderqvist), Copenhagen, May 2002.
American Association of the History of Medicine, annual meeting, “A Strange Medical Alignment: Gender, Healing, and Physiotherapy in the United States, 1920-1935,” Kansas City, April 2002.
