On September 2nd, the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine will host their Summer 2020 Colloquium, honoring their special issue focused on Medical Education. The Colloquium will feature Carolyn Roberts, Phd. Dr. Roberts is an Assistant Professor of History of Science & History of Medicine and African American Studies at Yale.
Professor Roberts’ research interests concern early modern medicine where she explores themes of race and slavery, natural history and botany, and African indigenous knowledge in the Atlantic world. Professor Roberts is currently working on a book project called To Heal and To Harm: Medicine, Knowledge, and Power in the Atlantic Slave Trade, the first full-length study of the history of medicine in the British slave trade. The book’s narrative is centered around the pharmaceutical and medical labor performed by a largely unknown group of African and British women and men, both enslaved and free.
In studying their labor, Roberts’ project illustrates how the slave trade functioned as an insidious, and even ghostly, knowledge project which pushed the boundaries of pharmacy, surgery, and natural history. Professor Roberts vividly traces how the slave trade contributed to the development of the pharmaceutical industry, the modernization of medicine, and the advancement of natural history. (Src: Yale AFAM Website)
Join the Colloquium via Zoom at 4:00PM EST on Sept 2. The special issue on Medical Education will be published by the end of August on the Journal’s website.
In related news, the Yale School of Nursing has recently decided to eliminate the position of Dean of Diversity. The students who oppose this are circulating a petition need your support. Sign here.