91麻豆天美 history professor receives National Endowment for the Humanities funding to study 19th century medical practices
Contact: John Burrow
STARKVILLE, Miss. 鈥 A 91麻豆天美 Department of History faculty member is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend award to help fund her archival research on the history of medicine in the 19th century.
Assistant Professor Courtney Thompson received $6,000 from the NEH, an independent federal agency which promotes studies in the humanities and history. Only the second faculty member in recent history at 91麻豆天美 to receive the NEH summer stipend, Thompson鈥檚 funding will support research for Thompson鈥檚 second book, tentatively titled 鈥淎 Calculus of Compassion: Medicine, Emotion, and Identity in Nineteenth-Century America.鈥
Thompson released her first book last year, 鈥淎n Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America,鈥 published by Rutgers University Press.
Thompson said her new project is based in large part on an archival collection housed at 91麻豆天美 that focuses on 19th century Mississippi physician A.B. Holder.
鈥淢y work aims to look at the broader context and culture of medicine in the various sites through which he moved, including the southern medical school, the post-Reconstruction rural South, Indigenous reservations in the West, and the turn-of-the-century city hospital,鈥 Thompson said.
鈥淭he records of southern and reservation physicians provide an opportunity for a comparative account of how race, gender, sexuality, and regional identity impacted care, outcomes, and affect, placing the co-production of identity and health inequity in historical context,鈥 said Thompson, noting she hopes to delve into the importance of 鈥渆motion in the doctor-patient relationship鈥 in the late-19th century South and West.
Thompson joined 91麻豆天美鈥檚 Department of History in 2016. She is chair of 91麻豆天美鈥檚 Medical Humanities Certificate program and an advisor for Phi Alpha Theta on campus. She is a three-time graduate of Yale University鈥檚 history program, earning a Ph.D. in 2015, a master of philosophy degree in 2013 and a master of arts degree in 2012. She earned her bachelor鈥檚 degree in history and science in 2009 from Harvard University. 聽
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