Participant Info

First Name
Heather
Last Name
Munro Prescott
Country
United States
State
CT Connecticut
Affiliation
Central Connecticut State University
Website URL
http://knittingclio.org
Keywords
Women's History, Suffrage, Birth Control, Reproductive Rights, Disability History, Childhood, Youth
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
Department of History Central Connecticut State University New Britain, CT 06050 prescott@ccsu.edu 860-832-2809
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Heather Munro Prescott received her undergraduate degree in Comparative Religion, summa cum laude, from the University of Vermont in 1984. She received her M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1994) in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University. She joined the faculty at CCSU in that year. In April 2010, upon the recommendation of a Faculty Senate advisory committee and President Jack Miller, the Board of Trustees selected Dr. Prescott as a Connecticut State University Professor.

Dr. Prescott’s research and teaching interests include U.S. women’s history, history of medicine and public health, history of childhood, and disability history. Her first book, A Doctor of Their Own: The History of Adolescent Medicine, received the Will Solimene Award of Excellence in Medical Communication from the New England Chapter, American Medical Writers Association. Her most recent book is The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception, published by Rutgers University Press in 2011. She has also published articles on the history of medicine in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and Technology and Culture.

Dr. Prescott has also received numerous grants and awards, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Fellowship in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and publication grants from the National Library of Medicine. She most recently received the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellowship from the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library, Harvard Medical School. She is currently working on a book on the a cultural history of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Recent Publications

“We Must Not Allow a Contraception Gap: Planned Parenthood’s Campaign for New Birth Control in the 1990s.” Technology and Culture, 60/3 (2019): 816-832,DOI: 10.1353/tech.2019.0074.

“‘This is Not a Dalkon Shield:’ The Renaissance of the Intrauterine Divice in the United States.” Technology’s Stories. December 7, 2016.

“Pushing the Cause of Women Physicians Ahead: Connecticut’s Women Physicians during the First World War.” Connecticut History Review55/2 (2016): 200-224.

“’An Uncommonly Silly Law’ — Contraception and Disparities in the United States.”  New England Journal of Medicine374 (February 2016): 706-708. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1508816.

“The Limits of Griswold v. Connecticut.”Connecticut History Review54/2 (Fall 2015): 277-83.

“The Pill at Fifty: Scientific Commemoration and the Politics of American Memory.” Technology and Culture54/4 (2013): 735-745.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Children & Youth, Gender, Medicine, Public History, Science, Sexuality, Technology, Women, World War I