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.