History of Medicine Faculty and Associated Faculty

John Eyler, Program Director and Director of Graduate Studies

511 Diehl Hall
612-624-5921
eyler001@umn.edu

John Eyler received his B.A. in history from the University of Maryland (1966) and his Ph.D. in history of science from the University of Wisconsin (1971). After a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in the history of medicine sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, he taught for a year in the History Department of Northwestern University. The following year, 1974, he joined the History of Medicine Program at University of Minnesota.

His broad interest is the intersection of scientific expertise and modern society, particularly aggregate problems of health and health care: the history of disease, the development of health policy, the evolution of social welfare, the changing nature of hospitals, the history of public health and preventive medicine, and the history of epidemiology. Modern Britain and America are particular interests. He has published two books: Victorian Social Medicine: The Ideas and Methods of William Farr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1979); and Sir Arthur Newsholme and State Medicine, 1885-1935 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1997). His articles and book chapters deal with the history of epidemiology and public health, with poverty and disease, with nineteenth-century theories of disease, and with history of vital statistics. He is currently studying influenza research in the twentieth century.

Jennifer Gunn, Director of Undergraduate Studies

510 Diehl Hall
612-624-1909
gunnx005@umn.edu

Jennifer L. Gunn, Assistant Professor, received her M.A. and Ph.D. in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation was on graduate medical education in the United States, and she has a continuing interest in health policy. Previous work was focused on the intersections among the history of medicine, biology, and the social sciences, particularly around the issues of population, birth control, and eugenics. Her publications include "A Few Good Men: The Rockefellers and Population Studies," in Theresa Richardson and Donald Fisher, eds. The Development of the Social Sciences in the U.S. and Canada: The Role of Philanthropy (Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing, 1999), and "Factory Work for Doctors," Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, series V, 17 (1995), 61-93. Her interests in history of philanthropy, occupational medicine, and the organization of health care are now converging in a book project on the history of rural medical practice in twentieth-century America.

C. Carlyle Clawson, Professor of Pediatrics and Instructor in History of Medicine

525E Diehl Hall
612-624-2643
claws001@umn.edu

Dr. Bud Clawson is a Professor of Pediatrics who also holds a joint appointment as Lecturer in the History of Medicine Program. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School and has sustained a long-standing interest in the history of medicine since his undergraduate days at Hamline University in St. Paul. He has spent nearly all his professional career at the University of Minnesota, embracing activities in bench and clinical research in human host-defense mechanisms, departmental and medical school administration, clinical pediatrics, and medical education. Clinically, his special interest is childhood asthma, and he maintains a practice in community pediatric medicine, where he also tutors medical students and pediatric residents.

As a member of our History of Medicine faculty, Bud lectures on a variety of topics in medical history from the early Royal Hospitals of London to the poor treatment of American Civil War prisoners. However, his special interest is in the evolution of American pediatrics from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. He has presented, along with Professor Eyler, a course on this topic for medical students and pediatric residents. As part of this study, he has documented the history of the Department of Pediatrics at Minnesota.

Jole Shackelford, Adjunct Assistant Professor

525D Diehl Hall
612-624-4499
shack001@umn.edu

Jole Shackelford, Visiting Professor of the History of Medicine, received the BS, MA, and Ph.D. degrees in the History of Science from the University of Wisconsin, with an emphasis on early science and medicine. His research interest is in early modern European medicine, particularly the social and intellectual responses to the chemical, medical and religious ideas of Paracelsus. Currently he is completing a book on the sixteenth-century Danish Paracelsian physician Petrus Severinus and has begun his next major research project, a study of Ole Worm and the relationship between medical education and the new science in seventeenth-century Denmark. Recent publications include a book on William Harvey, part of a series of biographies aimed at the high school and beginning undergraduate market (William Harvey and the Mechanics of the Heart); "Documenting the Factual and the Artificial: Ole Worm and Public Knowledge," Endeavor, 23 (1999), 65-71; and "Rosicrucianism, Lutheran Orthodoxy, and the Rejection of Paracelsianism in Early Seventeenth-Century Denmark," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 70 (1996), 181-204. For more information, see his home page and follow the man.

Mark Borrello, Assistant Professor, Ecology, Evolution and Behavior

100 Ecology Building (Office: Room 304)
Tel: 612-624-7079
Fax: 612-624-6777
borrello@umn.edu

Mark Borrello is a historian of biology with a particular interest in evolutionary theory, genetics, behavior and the environment. His work explores the varied interpretations and applications of evolutionary theory from the late 19th century to the present. His dissertation, Vero Copner Wynne-Edwards and the History of Group Selection Theory, was completed in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University (2002). During a post-doctoral teaching fellowship, Professor Borrello taught courses in the history of genetics and evolution and was co-leader of a study abroad course in Panama on Tropical Biodiversity and Conservation.

He is currently examining the connections of group selection to ethology and evolutionary psychology. This research aims to clarify the factors that contributed to the development of the field of ethology and illuminate some of the shortcomings of the developing field of evolutionary psychology that are a direct result of this history.

Jon M. Harkness, Adjunct Assistant Professor

525D Diehl Hall
Office: 612-624-0683
Home: 763-383-1845
jon.harkness@comcast.net

Jon M. Harkness received a B.A. in biology from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa (1985) and a Ph.D. in history of science from the University of Wisconsin (1996). For seven years (1992–1999), he served as managing editor of Isis, the official journal of the History of Science Society—the first two years, when the journal was housed at the University of Wisconsin; the second five, when Isis editorial operations were at Cornell University. While at Cornell, he taught survey courses in the history of medicine in that university’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. In the mid-1990s (1994–1995), he also served as a consultant to President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

His research centers on the history of medical science in the twentieth century, largely in an American context. He is especially interested in the history of human experimentation and the development of chronic disease epidemiology. He has a contract with Oxford University Press to publish a revised version of his dissertation, “Research behind Bars: A History of Nontherapeutic Research on American Prisoners,” as a book. His past publications include “Laying Ethical Foundations for Clinical Research,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 79 (April 2001): 365–366 and “Nuremberg and the Issue of Wartime Experiments on US Prisoners: The Green Committee,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 276 (27 November 1996): 1672–1675.

Tamara Giles-Vernick, Associate Professor, Department of History

614 SST
267 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-626-7598
Fax: 612-624-7096
tgv@umn.edu

I received my Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1996. I am an Africanist historian focusing on environmental history and the history of public health, although I seek to place my research questions into a broader comparative context. My first book, Cutting the Vines of the Past, explored the production of historical and environmental knowledge among a particular group of equatorial Africans. It investigated how their knowledge and ways of knowing changed over the twentieth century, and how they used this knowledge in their engagements with contemporary rain forest conservation interventions.

My current research, undertaken with anthropologist Samba Diop, seeks to develop a twentieth-century intellectual history of malaria from the perspective of West Africans living in colonial Mali. The project investigates the medicalization of knowledge about malaria, tracing how environment, colonial development aims, and social and cultural difference shaped knowledge about malaria. I am also interested in exploring these issues comparatively, and thus am currently editing a collection that explores the intersections of the history of public health and environmental history in the imperial world. I plan to offer courses in environmental history, health and healing in Africa, and historical methodologies. My recent publications include Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rain Forest (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002); "Doli: Translating an African Environmental History of Loss in the Sangha River Basin of Equatorial Africa," Journal of African History 41,3(2000), 373-394; and "We Wander Like Birds: Migration, Indigeneity, and the Fabrication of Frontiers in the Sangha Basin of Equatorial Africa," Environmental History 4,2 (1999), 168-197.

Susan Jones, Associate Professor, Ecology, Evolution/Behavior

100 Ecology Building
jone0996@umn.edu

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Program in the History of Science and Technology

108 Pillsbury Hall (Office: Room 123)
612-624-9368
Fax: 612-625-3819
sgk@tc.umn.edu

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Illinois. She is particularly interested in issues of science in American culture. Active in the History of Science Society, she is past President and is currently on the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has published articles and books relating to connections between science and the public in nineteenth-century natural history including popularization, museums, and both public and higher education. In conjunction with the AAAS sesquicentennial she wrote, with Michael M. Sokal and Bruce V. Lewenstein, The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999). She has also published on women, gender, and science, most recently editing a collection of essays in History of Women in the Sciences from ISIS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). She is currently working on the idea of nature study, an informal and curricular program widespread at the end of the nineteenth century.

Elaine Tyler May, American Studies and History

104 Scott Hall
612-626-7847
Fax: 612-624-3858
mayxx002@umn.edu

Elaine Tyler May, Professor of American Studies and History, received her M.A. and Ph.D. in United States History from UCLA in 1975. She taught at Princeton University in the Department of History from 1974 to 1978 and then joined the core faculty of American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is also on the graduate faculty in the Department of History and the Department of Women's Studies. Her interests include the history of women and the family in the United States, the history of sexuality and reproduction and the relationship between private life, politics and public policy. Her publications include Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988, new ed., 1999); and Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Claus Pierach, Professor

525E Diehl Hall
612-624-2643
piera003@umn.edu

Born and raised in Germany, where he studied medicine, Dr. Claus Pierach graduated from Justus Liebig University in Giessen. After training in internal medicine in Mainz/Germany, Dr. Pierach came to Minneapolis in 1968, joining Dr.C.J. Watson to work in porphyria, to teach students and residents and to further develop his interest in the History of Medicine. Since that time he has researched the medical resistance (or lack thereof) against the Nazis during the Third Reich (1933-45). He also studies the life and teachings of Sir William Osler (1849-1919), is a member of the American Osler Society, and will assume its presidency in 2005. Dr. Pierach continues to teach and tutor medical students.

David Rhees, Adjunct Assistant Professor

Bakken Library & Museum
3537 Zenith Ave S.
Minneapolis, MN 55416-4623
612-926-3878
Fax: 612-927-7265
rhees001@umn.edu

David J. Rhees, Adjunct Assistant Professor of History of Medicine, received his Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from University of Pennsylvania. Since 1992 he has served as Executive Director of the Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life in Minneapolis. His interests include the histories of electromedical technology, complementary therapies, chemistry, and the popularization of science and medicine. He is currently conducting an oral history project on the medical device industry in Minnesota. His publications include, with Kirk Jeffrey, "Earl Bakken's Little White Box: The complex Meanings of the First Transistorized Cardiac Pacemaker," in Exposing Electronics, ed. B. Finn (London: Science Museum, 2002, and East Lansing: MSU Press, 2002), and as solo author "Electricity-- the Greatest of All Doctors," Proceedings IEEE, 87 (1999), 1277-1281; and "The Chemists' War: the Impact of World War I on the American Chemical Profession," Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, 13-14 (1992-93), 40-47. He has curated numerous exhibits, including "It's Alive: The Science and Myth of Frankenstein" (Bakken Library and Museum, 1995-96).