Participant Info

First Name
Ashley
Last Name
Bowen
Country
United States
State
MD Maryland
Affiliation
American Historical Association
Website URL
https://www.historians.org/perspectives
Keywords
Disability, Medicine, Masculinity, Museum, Public History, Digital History, Alt-Ac
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Education

  • PhD, American Studies, Brown University, Providence, RI, December 2016
    • Dissertation: “‘All Broke Down:’ Negotiating the Meaning and Management of Civil War Trauma”
  • MA, Public Humanities, Brown University, Providence, RI, May 2013
  • MA, Communication, Culture, & Technology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, May 2009
    • Thesis: “Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Civil War Re-Enactors and The Creation of Heritage”
  • BA, Art History, Reed College, Portland, OR, May 2005
    Phi Beta Kappa

    • Thesis: “Politicizing the Everyday: The Role of the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung in Inter-War Germany”
  • German language course, Goethe Institute in Berlin, Germany, 2004

Fields of Study

“Public Health and the Welfare State: 1840-1920” under the direction of professor Richard Meckel, “Commemorative Practices: Politics, Publics, and Policy” with professor Steve Lubar, and “The Long 19th Century: American History and Culture from 1776-1918” with associate professor Michael Vorenberg: all three fields incorporated a broad spectrum of disciplines, methodologies, theories, and content areas. Each probes the scholarly, public, and political debates about health and medicine, and the American government’s role in each.

Fellowships, Awards, and Honors

  • Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow, 2018-2020
  • Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellow, 2015-2016
    • Course: “No Shot at Immunity: Opposition to Vaccination in the United States, 1800-2015”
  • F.C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 2015
  • Smithsonian Institution Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, 2014
  • Willard G. Oxtoby Prize, 2008
  • Academic fellowship, full tuition waver, Georgetown University, 2007-2009
Recent Publications

Curated Exhibitions

“Rashes to Research: Scientists and Parents Confront the 1964 Rubella Epidemic,” National Library of Medicine Exhibits Program, June 3-September 25, 2019.

“Rise, Serve, Lead! America’s Women Physicians,” banner exhibition and website update featuring a selection of the physician biographies featured in the 2003 NLM exhibition Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians, National Library of Medicine Exhibits Program, forthcoming March 2019.

“Politics of Yellow Fever in Alexander Hamilton’s America,” National Library of Medicine Exhibits Program, January 11-May 22, 2019.

Book Reviews

Exhibiting Health: Public Health Displays in the Progressive Era by Jennifer Lisa Koslow, reviewed for The Public Historian (forthcoming August 2021).

The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Siècle Europe by Robert Michael Brain, reviewed for Somatosphere May 2016, Available online.

Music Along the Rapidan: Civil War Soldiers, Music, and Community during Winter Quarters, Virginia by James A. Davis, reviewed for Civil War History 61, no. 4 (December 2015).
[DOI: 10.1353/cwh.2015.0075]

Selected Public Writing

“The Shoulder We Cry On.” Perspectives on History, March 2021.

“Radiant We, Decaying I: On Radioactive.” Lady Science, July 28, 2020.

 

“Peer-to-Peer Research Exchange: SHAFR’s Archival Records Discussion Group.” Perspectives Daily, June 10, 2020.

 

“Finding Hope: A Woman’s Place Is in the Lab.” Circulating Now (blog), September 6, 2018.

 

“Revealing Data: ‘The Psychological Clinic’ Explores IQ in 1911.” Circulating Now (blog), August 23, 2018

 

“Ephemera in the Dr. Leonidas H. Berry Collection.” Circulating Now (blog), July 18, 2018.

 

“Revealing Data: Rain, Epidemics, and Life on the Docks in 1918.” Circulating Now (blog), June 1, 2017.

 

“100 Must-Read Books about the History of Medicine.” Book Riot, March 15, 2017.

 

“A Few of the Problems with a Fetal Narrator.” Book Riot, September 26, 2016.

“Genre Kryptonite: Books About Archives and Museums.” Book Riot, May 3, 2016.

“Irritable Heart and Coping with the Trauma of War.” Mercy Street PBS, February 7, 2016.

“Jacob Mendes Da Costa.” Mercy Street PBS, January 25, 2016.

“The Nation’s First Tuberculosis Hospital Was Built Inside a Cave.” Atlas Obscura, June 7, 2016.

“Irritable Heart: Fictional Dr. Foster and Actual Dr. Jacob M. Da Costa.” National Museum of Civil War Medicine’s Mercy Street. Real to Reel, January 20, 2016.

“The American Textile Industry Was Woven From Espionage.” Atlas Obscura, January 13, 2016. .

“Where U.S. Mail Went to Die.” Atlas Obscura, October 28, 2015.

Academic Publications

“‘I Shall Get So Decayed with Laziness:’ The Ideology of the Broke Down Veteran in Miss Ravenel’s Conversion,” ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture 66, no. 4: 2020.

“National Museum of Health and Medicine.” Journal of American History 100, no. 3 (November 1, 2013): 775–781. doi:10.1093/jahist/jat457.

 

Media Coverage
C-SPAN, Atlas Obscura, Baltimore Public Radio, Frederick News Post
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
American Civil War, Gender, Medicine, Museums, Pedagogy, Public History, Science, Women