Research Associate, Supervisor: Thomas Schlich
触听rachel.elder [at] mcgill.ca听| 3647 Peel, 212
Rachel Elder is a historian of science, medicine, technology, and disability in American culture. Her current book manuscript, 鈥淪ecrecy and Safety: A Cultural History of Seizures in Mid-Twentieth Century America鈥� (under contract and forthcoming with Johns Hopkins University Press), explores how epilepsy was redefined in an era of rising, yet largely unrealized, hopes for medical control.听The project traces new forms of invisible disability that followed in postwar public life, and as a dissertation-to-book project, won the Pressman-Burroughs Career Development Award from the American Association for the History of Medicine. She is also working on projects that examine the role of neurological patients in constructing knowledge about the brain, histories of men in nursing, and a CIHR-funded project with Thomas Schlich on technology and patient consumerism in American medicine and healthcare. Before coming to 91社区, Rachel was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Social Medicine and Humanities at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Lecturer in the Program of the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University. She holds a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Research Interests:
20th听century medicine; disability; technology and the body; gender and science; sexuality; neurology and neuroscience
Selected Publications:
鈥淲hite Suits and Kangaroo Kills: Making Men鈥檚 Careers in American Nursing.鈥澨�Gender & History听(May 2021).
鈥淪peaking Secrets: Epilepsy, Neurosurgery, and the Patient Testimony in the Age of the Explorable Brain, 1934-1960.鈥澨�Bulletin of the History of Medicine听89.4 (Winter 2015), 761-789.
鈥淪afe Seizures, Schoolyard Stoics, and the Construction of Secure Citizens at the Detroit White School for Epileptic Children."听Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth听7.3 (Fall 2014), 430-461.
鈥淐hasing Whispers in the Neuro Archive.鈥澨�Osler Library Newsletter. No. 117 (Fall 2012), 6-7.
With Catherine Carstairs. 鈥淓xpertise, Health, and Popular Opinion: Debating Water Fluoridation, 1945-80.鈥澨�The Canadian Historical Review听89.3 (Fall 2008), 345-371.
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