Dana P. Landress

Dana P. Landress

Assistant Professor

she/her/hers

landress@wisc.edu

(608) 262-6430

Office: Room 1411, Medical Sciences Center

Joint Appointment: History

Dana P. Landress

I am a historian of 19th and 20th century science, medicine, and public health in the United States. My research examines the formation of the field of nutritional sciences, the development of public health, and community health programs in the U.S. South. I am especially interested in histories of structural racism, economic inequality, and community health activism as they pertain to everyday encounters with science, medicine, and public health. My research also encompasses histories of southern foodways, diasporic culinary traditions, and medicinal remedies of the rural South. My first book (forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press in 2027) details the social history of pellagra, a nutritional deficiency disease, and its prevalence in the U.S. South across the early 20th century. I am also a contributor to a forthcoming edited volume entitled Sickness and Capitalism: New Essays in Public Health, Medicine, and the Environment. 

My writing has been featured in The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food Studies, and the Journal of Southern History. I currently serve as an Advisory Editor for Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society.

My research has been supported by grants from the American Association of University Women, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Morgridge Center for Public Service, and the University of Wisconsin’s Office of Vice Chancellor for Research.

Education
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
M.A., University of California, Berkeley
B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Book

The image is a beige book cover featuring the book title Malady of Monoculture and subtitle in blue and black text

Malady of Monoculture
Pellagra, Public Health, and the Pathologies of Cotton’s Capitalism

In Malady of Monoculture, Dana Landress reveals how the unrelenting demands of the cotton economy during the Jim Crow South created a public health crisis in the form of pellagra. She carefully details a “closed food system” that restricted workers’ diets through employer-generated currency; the use of food as an instrument of labor compulsion; manufactured debt structures; alliances between government and private industry; and
restrictions on foraging, gardening, and land use. Though official public health programs framed pellagra in personal and behavioral terms, those afflicted with the illness actively challenged the closed food system through union organizing, community health care, freedom farms, and collective action lawsuits. Excavating the landmark contributions of Black nutritionists to the field of public health, Landress spotlights the many constituencies that worked tirelessly to combat hunger and foregrounds their creativity, resilience, and determination. 

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo279113788.html

Selected Publications

Academic

  • Dana Landress, “Famished for Freedom: Pellagra and Medical Clemency at the Mississippi State Penitentiary” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (80, no. 02, Jan. 2025). https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrae048
  • Book Review: Jim Crow in the Asylum: Psychiatry and Civil Rights in the American South, Kylie Smith (UNC Press, 2026), Review in the Journal of Southern History, forthcoming.
  • Book Review: Searching for Dr. Harris: The Life and Times of a Remarkable African American Physician By Margaret Humphreys (UNC Press, 2024), Review in the Journal of Southern History (October, 2025), https://www.thesha.org/contents.
  • Book Review: Nina Mackert, Inventing the Calorie: The Politics of Food in the Early 20th Century U.S. (NYU Press, 2026). Review in Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, forthcoming. 

Public-Facing

  • Chazen Art Museum Public Lecture (October 2026) Rendering Visible
  • Listen to my interview on the James Beard nominated podcast, “Eat This!” Eat This Podcast episode
  • Connecting Through Literature, Media, and the Museum – AAHM Webinar Series AAHM Webinar
  • CBS 58 – Milwaukee CBS Interview, “Discovered Documents Reveal More About Milwaukee County Insane Asylum”
  • Channel 3000 News, “UW Study Focuses on Recruiting Black Participants to Make Alzheimer’s Research More Inclusive”

Advisor To

Kayleigh Larsen

Selected Awards

  • Morgridge Faculty Fellow in Community Engaged Scholarship, 2026
  • First Book Award, UW Madison Center for the Humanities, 2025
  • Partnership Program in Graduate Excellence, UW Office of the Vice Chancellor, 2023-2024
  • American Association of University Women Fellowship, 2021-2022
  • Andrew W. Mellon and Council on Library and Information Resources Fellowship, 2019-2020
  • U.C. Berkeley School of Public Health Research Award, 2019
  • Southern Historical Collection Research Fellowship, 2019

Courses Taught

HISTSCI 211: Food Histories from Farm to Table
MHB/HISTSCI 509: The Development of Public Health in America
HISTSCI 360: Histories of Health Inequality in the Long 20th Century
MHB 746: Race, Science, and Medicine: Past and Present 
HISTSCI 921: Health, Labor, and Capitalism