Beth Linker

Beth Linker
Associate Professor
Ph.D., Yale University
B.S., Ithaca College
Contact Information
Office Address: 
365 Claudia Cohen Hall
Telephone: 
215-898-7454
Email Address: 
linker@sas.upenn.edu
Office Hours: 
By appt.
Teaching Fields: 

History of medicine, the body, surgery, disability, American health policy, bioethics, public health; gender and health; history and sociology of medicalization

Research Interests: 

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.

Books:

War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Selected Publications: 

"A Dangerous Curve: The Role of History in America's Scoliosis Screening Programs," American Journal of Public Health (April 2012).

“Shooting Disabled Soldiers: Medicine and Photography in World War I America,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (June 2010).

“Feet for Fighting: Locating Disability and Social Medicine in World War I America,”  Social History of Medicine (April 2007).[winner of the 2005 Roy Porter Memorial Essay Prize]

"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, 2007).

"Strength and Science: Gender, Physiotherapy, and Medicine in Early-Twentieth-Century America" J. of Women's History (Fall 2005).

“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 (July 2005).[winner of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities essay award]

Works in Progress:

Slouch: The Rise and Fall of American Posture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, proposal in preparation)

Globalizing Disability: World War I and the Making of Modern Rehabilitation, co-edited with Heather Perry, Ph.D. (book proposal in preparation).

Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Theory, and the Body, co-edited with Nancy Hirschmann, Sigal Ben-Porath, and Mara Mills (volume based on April 1, 2011 conference held at the University of Pennsylvania. Proposal to be reviewed by University of Pennsylvania Press).

Book Images: 
[image of book cover]
War's Waste
AttachmentSize
HSOC 140 history of bioethics syllabus.pdf148.75 KB
HSSC 561 Disability: History and Theory syllabus.pdf121.68 KB
HSOC 042 Snip and Tuck F10 syllabus.pdf274.85 KB
HSSC 541 Issues in American Medicine syllabus.pdf18.91 KB
HSOC 413 Perfect Bodies syllbus F10.pdf129.57 KB
HSOC 041 Disability in History syllabus S07.pdf154.54 KB
HSOC 150 American Health Policy syllabus S11..pdf223.97 KB
HSSC 532 Medicalization: History and Theory syllabus.pdf138.43 KB
HSSC 541 Science of Sexology syllabus.doc53.5 KB