NANCY TOMES
Distinguished Professor |
PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1978 |
Office: Social & Behavioral Sciences - Level 3, Room N-323 |
Interests: U.S. social and cultural history; history of medicine; women; gender
Bio:
My research interests have ranged widely over the past four decades, but almost all my work has focused on the intersection between expert knowledge and popular understandings of the body and disease. Those interests are reflected in my publications: A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum Keeping (Cambridge, 1984; paperback, Penn, 1994), Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness Before 1914, with Lynn Gamwell (Cornell, 1995), The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life (Harvard, 1998), and Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers (UNC, 2016); plus two co-edited collections, Medicine's Moving Pictures, with Leslie Reagan and Paula Treichler (Rochester, 2007), and Patients as Policy Actors, with Beatrix Hoffman, Rachel Grob, and Mark Schlesinger (Rutgers, 2011); and a website, "Medicine and Madison Avenue," on the history of health-related advertising, developed in collaboration with Duke University Library's Special Collections.
Recent Courses:
Undergraduate
- HIS 396.01 Topics in US History: Historical Perspectives on the September 11 terrorist attacks
- HIS 398.01 The History of the American Mental Hospital
- HIS 370 US Social History, 1860-1940
Graduate
- HIS 535 Theme Seminar on Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction: Body Politics