Emily Harrison
Assistant Teaching Professor in Women’s & Gender Studies
Health, Development, and Evidence
I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. I hold a PhD in the History of Science, an SM in Global Health and Population with a certificate in Maternal and Child Health, and a BA in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, all from Harvard University.
My research focuses on the role of evidence in health and medicine, drawing on historical and ethnographic resources and methods. My principle research project is a history of global health metrics, with other ongoing research projects exploring clinical epidemiology, ecology, and traumatic brain injury. I am deeply interested in the power and limits of storytelling, and in my scholarly work I emphasize the role of life stories as a method for bridging analysis and narrative. In addition to my research and writing I am deeply interested in pedagogy that bridges not only disciplines but the multiple sectors of local, national, and global societies.
Education
- B.A., Harvard University
- M.S., Harvard University
- Ph.D., Harvard University
Current and upcoming courses
Health Activism
WGST210
Health is a powerful manifestation of the economic, political and cultural substructures of society. This course uses a focus on health at the population level and attention to the distribution of disease to explore the strategies deployed to pursue historical change in the name of health. Focusing on examples throughout U.S. history and in the present day, we will examine social movements, as well as structural efforts to discuss collective struggles, reasoned debates, and successful strategies for transformation.
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Health Activism, Public Health and Epidemics
WGST310
Epidemics and pandemics lay bare the economic, political and cultural substructures of society. The history of changing explanations for infectious diseases dictate differing responses by health personnel and governmental entities. The seminar explores the intersectional aspects of race, gender, class, and sexuality that shape reactions and efforts to contain disease. Epidemics to be explored include plague, syphilis, smallpox, cholera, polio, HIV/AIDS, flu and COVID-19. -
U.S. Public Health
WGST240
A quarter century ago the Institute of Medicine defined the work of public health as "what we as a society do collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy." Historically rooted in a commitment to social justice, U.S. public health is now renewing this commitment through 1) an epidemiological shift to examine the social, economic, and political inequities that create disparate health and disease patterns by gender, class, race, sexual identity, citizenship, etc., and 2) a corresponding health equity movement in public health practice. This broad-ranging course examines the debates shaping the above as well as the moral and legal groundings of public health, basic epidemiology, and the roles of public and private actors. Highlighted health topics vary year to year. (PEAC 240 and WGST 240 are cross-listed courses.)