Category: Working Group

[Upcoming] Working Group, Diana Anselmo

history, immigration, suicide, trauma, violence

Diana Anselmo, a film and media studies researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, will be presenting her current project on the experiences of working-class immigrant women during the 1910s. She will provide a microhistorical account of the physical, mental, and social injuries inflicted on a working-class immigrant woman who eventually committed suicide in Chicago.
[Upcoming] Working Group, Jennifer Uribe

health equity, infrastructure, sociology, transportation, trauma, violence

Jennifer Uribe, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at UCLA, will workshop a draft of one of their dissertation chapters. Jennifer examines the ways infrastructural neglect contributes to injuries and collective trauma, exacerbating social inequities in urban communities.
Working Group, Kaushiki Arha

history, law, trauma, violence

Kaushiki Arha, a Ph.D. candidate at Jawaharlal Nehru University, presented part of her dissertation project, which explores the gendered legal and social adjudication of sexual violence in India. Her project considers how the changing definition of rape from a physical assault to a violation of consent has paradoxically made prosecuting cases of sexual violence more difficult.
Working Group, Alexander Parry

history, home safety, injury prevention, product safety, regulation, technology

Alex Parry from the University of Rochester Medical Center presented a draft proposal for his book project Home Safe Home: Housework, Consumption, Regulation, and the Making of Home Injury Prevention, c. 1910–1980. His project charts the history of product safety and shows how accidents affected life at home. He discusses how and why Americans relied on education,…
Working Group, Katarina Sawtelle

diagnosis, drowning, first aid, history, Risk perception, water safety

Katarina Sawtelle, an anesthesiologist at MaineHealth and an M.A. graduate from Johns Hopkins, presented an article based on her thesis, which examines the life-saving efforts of the British Royal Humane Society from the late-1700s to early-1800s. Her talk described some of the public spaces where these life-saving activities occurred and changing historical ideas about the drowned and…
Working Group, Zeynel Gul

anthropology, diagnosis, disability, law, uncertainty, workplace safety

Zeynel Gul from the University of Illinois, Chicago, presented some material from his book project on the diagnostic and legal uncertainty surrounding silicosis cases in Turkey. His presentation described how the procedures used to arbitrate occupational health discount the experiences of workers themselves and demonstrated the fuzziness of the line between injuries and illnesses.
Working Group, Arwen Mohun

Risk perception, simulation, technology, uncertainty, war, workplace safety

Arwen Mohun from the University of Delaware presented an article draft related to her project on indoor air pollution titled “Injured by Bad Air: Submarine Medicine, Industrial Hygiene, and the Invention of an Atmospheric Anthropocene.” The article concerned the efforts of the U.S. Navy to study the effects of emergency ascents from submarines and to…
Working Group, Po-Hsun Chen

East Asia, regulation, Risk perception, toxicity, uncertainty

Po-Hsun Chen, a practicing physician in Taiwan who received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, presented an article draft based on the fourth chapter of his dissertation, which examines the perception and regulation of toxic herbal medicines in East and Southeast Asia. The session focused on the problems of toxicity and the identities of traditional…
Working Group, Diana Novaceanu

art history, performance art, self-harm, trauma

Diana Novaceanu from the University of Bucharest presented some of her research on the role of injuries and self-harm in contemporary Eastern European art. Her project examines artists from Romania and Ukraine to achieve three objectives: 1. To describe how injuries fit into art throughout the former Eastern bloc; 2. To position this art as an…
Working Group, Joanna Paxton Federico

agnotology, gun violence, injury prevention, Risk perception, violence

Joanna Paxton Federico, a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers workshopped the first chapter of her dissertation, which explores the emergence of violence as an object of public health interest in the 1960s and early 1970s. Much of her project focuses on the production of ignorance (agnotology) around the effects of gun violence, and her work delves into…
Working Group, Jonathan Reinarz

disasters, first aid, history, simulation

Jonathan Reinarz from the University of Birmingham delivered a presentation based on his current collaborative research project with Gayle Davis at the University of Edinburgh titled “Simulating Injuries in Twentieth-Century British First Aid.” Jonathan introduced our conversation with some context about the British Casualties Union, which was formed during WWII and used realistic simulations to…
Working Group, Maya Sorini

emergency medicine, narrative, poetry, trauma

This session featured Maya Sorini, a fourth-year medical student and poet at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Maya has an M.S. in Narrative Medicine from Columbia, and her clinical and artistic work focuses on emergency medicine. Maya presented a draft conference talk and outline of her planned curriculum on parallel charting, a process through which…