David S. Barnes, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Director, Health & Societies Program
University of Pennsylvania
Department of History and Sociology of Science
303 Logan Hall, 249 S. 36th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304
Telephone: (215) 898-8210
E-mail
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
B.A. Yale University
Teaching Fields: history of medicine; history of public health; global health policy and disease prevention; history, anthropology, and sociology of health and disease.
Research Interests: history of infectious disease, epidemiology, and public health; the Bacteriological Revolution and its effect on public health; 19th century European (esp. French) social and cultural history; cultural history of bodily knowledge and practices; history of disgust.
David Barnes studied urban history and French history at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley. In the course of researching his doctoral dissertation on the social history of tuberculosis in nineteenth-century France, he turned his attention toward the history of medicine and public health. He taught at the University of California San Francisco, Emory University, and Harvard University before arriving at Penn in 2002.
His first book, The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1995), explores the social transformations and anxieties which colored and constrained responses to the industrializing world's leading killer. His second book, The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), investigates how scientific developments, political imperatives, and shifting cultural mores combined to reshape perceptions of health, disease, and bodily substances during the Bacteriological Revolution.
David Barnes's ongoing research projects include (1) the politics of international disease control programs in the twentieth century, (2) the history of the Lazaretto quarantine station (1799-1893) on the Delaware River just outside Philadelphia, and (3) the history of disgust.
Books
The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006)
The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1995)
Other Recent Publications:
"Targeting Patient Zero," in Flurin Condrau and Michael Worboys, eds., The White Plague Revisited: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History of Tuberculosis (Montreal, QC and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen's University Press, forthcoming).
“Confronting Sensory Crisis in the Great Stinks of London and Paris,” in William A. Cohen and Ryan Johnson, eds., Filth: Dirt, Disgust, and Modern Life (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
"Scents and Sensibilities: Disgust and the Meanings of Odors in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris," Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques 28 (2002): 21-49.
"Historical Perspectives on the Etiology of Tuberculosis," Microbes and Infection 2 (2000): 431-440.
David Barnes’s Research in the News:
"Reaching Back for Roots: A Hospital Holds Their Family's Tale, and Part of a Nation's," Philadelphia Inquirer, December 25, 2006
"Commentary: Plea to Save Tinicum's Lazaretto," Philadelphia Inquirer, June 22, 2006
"A Preservation Battle over Immigrant Site," Philadelphia Inquirer, June 21, 2006
"1892 Painting Illustrates Odd Links Among Animals, Art, and Medicine," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 8, 2006
"Ooze and Aahs: Why Tales of Epidemics Catch On," Philadelphia Inquirer, July 3, 2003
"Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad … Whatever It Is? SARS Scarier Than Common Threats; Risk Is a Feeling, Not a Statistic," Toronto Star, May 2, 2003
"Globalization, Economy Also Playing a Role: Understanding the Fear SARS Outbreak Brings," Philadelphia Inquirer, April 18, 2003
"The Uses of Disgust," Harvard University Gazette, April 8, 1999
