Doctoral Candidate
Language: Spanish
Educational Background: B.S., Biology w/minor in History, University of West Georgia, 2013
Email: lankfor4@msu.edu
A convert to history, I am interested in the interweavings, tensions, and negotiations that exist among science, medicine, and human experience. My current research examines the field trials of contraceptives in Puerto Rico from 1956 to 1966.
My project recognizes the multitude of actors, agents, and agendas that shape the creation of new medicines and medical knowledge. To challenge the trope of medicine as an exceptional and exclusive realm, I focus on the ground level experiences of physicians, social workers, organizations, and trial participants (those taking contraceptives as part of a field trial). In so doing, I aim to illuminate the intersections of science and medicine, Puerto Rican society and culture, colonialism, gender, and race, as well as how how each constituted the rest in the mid-twentieth century.
Before entering the doctoral program at MSU, I received a Bachelor’s of Science in Biology at the University of West Georgia. At UWG, I served as an undergraduate research assistant for more than two years in Dr. Mautusi Mitra’s lab. Mitra Lab investigates the molecular components of eukaryotic photosynthesis and pigment synthesis in the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. It was in Mitra Lab that I first began to ponder science’s and medicine’s relationship with culture and society.
Advisor Naoko Wake
Committee Lisa Fine, Edward Murphy, and Helen Veit
Fields History of Science and Medicine, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Modern U.S. History
Specialization Women’s and Gender Studies, Center for Gender in a Global Context
Select Awards
Dissertation Completion Fellowship, College of Social Science, 2018
Madison Kuhn Award For Best Pre-Dissertation Research Project in U.S. History, 2015
Somers Excellence in Teaching Award for IAH Graduate Teaching Assistants, 2015
Courses
HST 201: Historical Methods and Research, Contraception in the 20th Century*
HST 202: U.S. History to 1876
HST 313: Women in the U.S. to 1869
HST 420: History of Sexuality
IAH 201: U.S. and the World, 1880 to Present
IAH 203: Latin America and the World
IAH 206: Self, Society, and Technology
ISS 335: National Diversity and Change in the U.S.: Sex Research and Social Science
LB 332: Technology and Culture
WS 201: Introduction to Women’s Studies*
*Instructor of record for the course. Teaching Assistant for all other courses.