Dana P. Landress

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Interests:
I am a historian of 19th and 20th century medicine and public health in the United States. My research examines the relationship between nutritional disease, community health work, and the political economy of capitalism in the U.S. South. Methodologically, my research blends the approaches and insights of social history, labor history, and oral history. I am especially interested in histories of structural racism, economic inequality, and community health activism as they pertain to patient encounters with medicine and public health. Additionally, I study histories of southern foodways, diasporic culinary traditions, and medicinal remedies of the rural South. Currently, I am at work on two projects. The first is a multidisciplinary book collaboration with scholars, activists, and health providers to document community healthcare work across the South. The second is a book project detailing the history of pellagra in the U.S. South.

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

Selected Awards:
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 Dissertation Research Fellowship, 2019
National Science Foundation Research Travel Grant, 2018

Selected Presentations and Publications:
Dana Landress, “The Pellagra Portraits” Journal of the American Medical Association Vol. 331, no. 3 (January 12, 2024)

Dana Landress, (Book Review in Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies) Violent Appetites: Hunger in the Early Northeast, Carla Cevasco, New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press 2022 256 pp. $50.00 (hardcover); (eBook).

Public-Facing Research:
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”

Courses Taught:
MHB/HOS 509: The Development of Public Health in America
HOS 360: Histories of Health Inequality in the Long 20th Century
MHB 746: Race, Science, and Medicine: Past and Present (co-instructor)