And our second fellow introduces herself!
Hello all, my name is Aja Lans and I am excited to be assisting the Medical Heritage Library as an Educational Resources Fellow. I will be developing collections on race and equity in health and healthcare, which is a major focus of my academic research.
In addition to spending my summer working with the MHL collections, I am preparing to defend my doctoral dissertation, “♀ Negro: Embodied Experiences of Inequality in Historic New York City,” at Syracuse University. My research focuses on bioarchaeology, race, and collections ethics by investigating the skeletal and archival remains of Black women who died in Progressive Era New York City, and who were subsequently dissected and curated. Drawing from Black feminist and critical race theory, I position myself as a Black woman and an anthropologist with the goal of accurately representing Black history in the United States. Viewing skeletal collections as an extension of the archive, I draw ties between historical and contemporary events in order to better understand how race becomes biologically embodied.
By closely examining the historical record we can see how racial inequality is created and maintained. In the fields of medicine and anthropology, Black bodies, both living and dead, have consistently been used as research subjects. However, due to the many forms racism and discrimination take, there are many disparities in overall health and mortality in the Black community. Unfortunately, Black death and suffering are often seen as the norm. Archival and historic research can be used to expose the roots of racism and health discrepancies, revealing that these patterns are not naturally occurring, but instead perpetuated by inequality. Early science and medicine played an important role in creating racialized peoples and hierarchies of humanity.
I look forward to exploring the MHL this summer and compiling resources that can be used to teach this important history. These collections will be freely accessible online. Come fall, I will be heading to Harvard University as part of the Inequality in America Initiative Postdoctoral Program, where I will continue my research. If you are interested in learning more, feel free to follow me on Twitter @aja_lans or find my work on Google Scholar!