Lydia Wytenbroek

Register now (deadline is 8/5) for Term 1 online courses: Introduction to the History of Medicine; Science & the practice of medicine; Work of Healing: Medicine & Materiality.

For more info: hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/non-degree-p...
To register: hopkinshistoryofmedicine.org/online-progr...

"...adopting a critical approach to settler family histories helps challenge the myth of Canadian benevolence, solidifies our understanding of the foundational violence of settler colonialism, and exemplifies the truth–telling that needs to come with settler reconciliation to Indigenous Peoples..."

History is not easy. You can't just read a book or two and call it a day.

Journals, of all disciplines, MUST do better. Stop publishing "historical" research without consulting actual historians who work in the field.

#MedMed #HistMed #MedievalSky #Skystorians

4/x

A plea:

I am 100% here for interdisciplinary work. But that work actually has to be INTERDISCIPLINARY: people working together across fields.

Not just someone from one field thinking that history is "easy" and, for that reason, "anyone can do it.

1/x

#HistMed #Skystorians #Medievalsky

I knew y’all would deliver.

But DANG did y’all DELIVER. 🥹

This is one heck of a reading list, for my class, for me (about 1/2 of these are new to me! yay!), and for anyone interested in the history of disease!

#HistMed

"So once you’re equipped with information, your next stop is the app store on your phone. There’s an app for every landmark on your journey. Just accept the terms, download, and follow the prompts. And stay alert to the health news filling your inbox. It is on you to journey safely, and older advice can lead you straight off a cliff."

On the fiction that we're in total control of our health.

Building on Nancy Tomes's history of patients becoming savvy consumers. #histmed 🗃️

hedgehogreview.com/issues/after...

Teaching a course this fall on contagion in history (pandemics, epidemics, understanding how people understood how disease spread, etc) this fall. Super excited about this one.

Any recommendations for accessible, engaging, and/or fun sources for first semester freshmen?

#histmed #skystorians

The Politics of Famine in European History and Memory - World Peace Foundation This new book investigates modern famines by shifting the focus from whether, to how and why famines are political.

Have a new book to read:

worldpeacefoundation.org/blog/the-pol...

All famines are man-made, all famines are political. Historians of empire and humanitarianism have known this forever. Gaza is not starving, Gaza is being starved, by Israel, and this starvation is enabled by our government and by every other government that does not step in to force food and aid.

The Mask A history of masks protecting against bad air—in cities, factories, hospitals, and war trenches—exploring how our identities and beliefs shape the decisi...

One of my favorite #histmed #histstm scholars @thomasschlich.bsky.social has just joined Bluesky. Check out his and @brunostrasser.bsky.social’s latest work on the history of the mask:

yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

More good reading on humanities workforce surpluses here. profession.mla.org/the-humaniti....

A color photo of a the cover of Osiris volume 40, titled Animal mobility’s. Edited by Tamar Novick, Lisa Onaga, and Gabriel N Rosenberg. The cover includes an Ann Mac Coy painting The Night Sea at Life

A color photo of the journal open to the first pages of my article ‘My eyes and my Friend: the mobilities and immobilities of guide dogs in the Twentieth century.’ It is seared on a heated pad seated on my lap.

I’ve been working on this publication since 2018 in one way or the other, and it’s a delight to hold the physical copy of the paper in Osiris, volume 40, 2025 in my hands.
if you would like to read the histories of guide dogs beyond the Europe and North America into Japan and Australia—here it is.

We’re at the heart and soul of the project of higher ed in the US, we teach students crucially valuable skills for the workplace, we are in the classroom far more than our peers, and we do so with extreme economic efficiency that in most places is profitable for our colleges./15

But what is the college experience if students don’t have direct, close, frequent access to their faculty? Not a learning experience i'd pay for. The humanities (& the small seminar style classes we tend to operate with) aren’t a luxury handbag or a latte to trim when the budget is tight. /14

This is very bad. Although entirely predictable. Once more the humanities are being cut back to prop up STEM and, increasingly, AI investment (including at the expense of bench science). In the past, cuts to humanities were promoted on two separate logic streams that do not hold true: /1

Terrific 🧵 reiterating critical pts I’ve mentioned on here repeatedly.

Bottom line is that humanities classes have terrific ROI in higher ed, have vocational outcomes AND lifetime earnings at least as good as most STEM subjects.

As Dr. Ginsberg notes, cutting humanities is pure ideology.

Sovereign Bodies, Sovereign Spaces | Maria John | University of North Carolina Press Statistics indicate that Indigenous people worldwide suffer disproportionately poor health outcomes. Since the mid-twentieth century, health activism has bec...

Strongly recommend Maria John's compelling comparative history of indigenous health activism - lessons for us all. Released now by @uncpress.bsky.social
#indigenous #histstm #histmed #sts

Congratulations to the co-leads of our Race and Biohumanities Theme, Nadine Ehlers, Anthony Ryan Hatch, Amade M'charek and Anne Pollock, on their new book!

You can read more on this web page: z.umn.edu/18996

And use the discount code MN92810 for 30% off when purchased through the above website.

(New Book) Immaculate Forms. Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies histoiresante.blogspot.com/2025/07/lhis... #histbody #histSTM

Assa Doron et Alex Broom - A World of Resistance

India and the Global Antibiotic Crisis

À paraître en mars aux Harvard UP

Received the most incredible peer review feedback today. I love it when historian colleagues provide feedback that pushes me to refine, strengthen, and nuance my arguments. So grateful for this community of scholarship!

#histmed #histstm

Continuing our series highlighting articles that now have digital object identifiers (DOIs) we turn to Volume 31 (2023).

Featuring keynote lecture "The Making of Nursing Science: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Knowledge, 1950–1990," by Dominique A. Tobbell.

Read here: doi.org/10.5325/nurs...

Black History Is Freedom History - AAIHS This post is part of our online roundtable on Françoise N. Hamlin and Charles W. McKinney Jr.’s From Rights to Lives. Sonia Sanchez once wrote, “Where is your fire? Can’t you smell it coming out of ou...

"Suturing together a wide range of scholars, the book allows 'everyone to eyewitness the ‘miraculous, magnificent, and messy activism and organizing’ of both the 1960s and 2010s'.” www.aaihs.org/black-histor...

Mellon Postdoc Fellowships in the Humanities wolfhumanities.upenn.edu/home

Attending #AusSTS25 has left me intellectually and emotionally full—it’s one of those rare feelings in academic life where you find your people, where every conversation leaves you with more than it takes.

From Arthur Kleinman: 'Medicine on a Larger Scale is ... a step forward in imagining a counter-biomedicine that can better connect social suffering and healing with interpretive social science, post-colonial imaginings, and some of the more serious problems of the world. Impressive!’

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Check out our newly released special issue, "Reproductive Objects"! Through a collection of stellar articles, it traces the material "stuff" that constitutes the uneven tapestries of power, authority, and knowledge making around human reproduction.
www.press.jhu.edu/journals/bul...

The Personal Value of Conversations Across Serious Disagreement (guest post) - Daily Nous "I know that people are reluctant to voice objections to things I’ve said, not because I’ve given a convincing argument, but because I’m a person with a disability making claims about disability, and ...

“I have been truly humbled by many of the ways in which someone I disagree with so starkly can continually fail to be a cartoon villain… it’s been one of the most philosophically enriching experiences of my life.” Elizabeth Barnes

dailynous.com/2025/07/08/t...

A little late in responding, but likewise! Looking forward to co-editing the special 75th anniversary issue of the Canadian Society for the History of Medicine with @alexandreklein.bsky.social 🥳: cshm-schm.ca/wp-content/u... #histSTM #histmed
Check out the CFP!