Beth Linker

Beth Linker is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science. Her research and teaching interests include the history of medicine, surgery, bioethics, the body, American health policy, and disability.

Her first book, War's Waste (University of Chicago Press, 2011) explains how rehabilitative medicine emerged during the First World War as a national solution to the economic and human devastation wrought by modern warfare. She has published articles in leading medical history journals, such as the Bulletin of the History of Medicine , Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and the Social History of Medicine. In 2007, she won the Roy Porter Essay Prize for her article "Feet for Fighting: Locating Disability and Social Medicine in First World War America." Her research and work has been supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Societies Program, the Mellon Foundation, the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, and the Barbara Bates Center.

Beth Linker is currently at work on her second book titled Slouch: The Rise and Fall of American Posture. She recently completed an article on the history of scoliosis examinations and treatments, titled "A Dangerous Curve,"( American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming) for which she has received Robert Wood Johnson funding.