Wednesday, March 23, 2011 @ 4:00pm
4207 Helen C. White (SLIS Commons)

Focusing upon Black Philadelphians, who then comprised one of the northern U.S.'s largest and most culturally significant African-American enclaves, this presentation explores the ways in which antebellum and Civil War-era African-American print culture combined the promotion of smallpox vaccination with contemporary ideals of 'fitness for freedom' and full citizenship.

Dayle B. DeLancey, Ph.D. joined the Department of Medical History and Bioethics as an Assistant Professor in October 2009. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, having received her Ph.D. and M.Sc. from CHSTM at the University of Manchester (UK) in Autumn 2007 and Autumn 2003, respectively, and her M.A. in English and American Literature from Harvard University in 1994. Her current research explores how African Americans viewed and experienced smallpox vaccination in the 19th and early-20th centuries and smallpox inoculation ('variolation') in the 18th century. This work encapsulates her broader research and teaching interests in the 19th- and 20th-c. history and ethics of African-American health experiences, U.S. public health, medical technologies, the public understanding of medicine, and race and gender in medicine. Explorations of discourse and print culture inform much of her work, a reflection of her earlier research and publication activities in American literature.

This program is part of the A.W. Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshops in the Humanities, sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at UW-Madison with support from the A.W. Mellon Foundation and the College of Letters and Science. Co-sponsored by the Center for the History of Print Culture. --