Congratulations to Rebecca Haddaway (dissertation co-advised by Claire Colebrook and Carla Mulford) on being awarded a Centers and Institutes Fellows award through the Humanities Institute.

In the fall, Rebecca will participate in HI activities and offer a lunchtime talk on the dissertation. The award also provides funding to support research.

Rebecca’s dissertation explores late eighteenth and early nineteenth century medical visions of race and the human body, examining discourses on politics and ethics. Rebecca’s project analyzes abolitionist visions of the body and health as situated in geographical space and community by examining the 1788 New York anatomy riot, the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic, and healing and death events of the Haitian Revolution. Rebecca’s key question: what impact did abolitionism have on visions of the body in antebellum medicine? The dissertation has an outreach component: Rebecca will create a public-facing digital map that combines narratives in a variety of textual media, explanations of events, and visual and material cultural artifacts from the several moments covered by my dissertation. The map will be designed for advanced high school and undergraduate students with the goal of visually representing the transnational nature of embodiment in early America in a way that challenges linear accounts of medical knowledge production. Students exploring the map will develop an understanding of the interconnections among freedom, enslavement, and human health, with a focus on the voices of communities most impacted by abolitionism and health practices.