Ongoing Projects
My dissertation project—Laboratories of Consent: Vaccine Science in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1779-1840—examines transformations in medical ethics and immunization in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Spanish Atlantic world. It argues that mothers, children, and the enslaved were instrumental in developing vaccine science and the ethics that regulated it, as young bodies became the primary conduit by which doctors reproduced and circulated smallpox vaccine throughout the empire. By analyzing the relationship between autonomy and expertise, it considers how mothers and the enslaved challenged authorities’ idea of consent—envisioned as a patriarchal form of exclusion—as immunization became embedded in an empire-wide struggle over parental rights, individual freedom, and imperial hierarchies challenged by the unrest of revolution. Spanish royal officials defined medical consent as a natural right of fathers, predicated on the belief that men were uniquely capable of rational thought. Heads of household were allowed to evaluate the efficacy of immunization and make medical decisions for their wives, children, and slaves. Laboratories of Consent explains how colonial authorities came to this decision, as well as why it was so frequently contested by doctors, family members, and officials who each had their own ideas about the value and utility of vaccine science. Studying immunization through the question of consent exposes the fragility of the gendered and racialized assumptions upon which scientific expertise was legitimized and the medical ethics by which they were maintained.
I am also working on two additional projects that explore the role of Maya codices in 19th century epidemiology (especially of yellow fever); and a history of atlantic midwives and their exchange of reproductive health knowledges during the Seven Years War.
My dissertation project—Laboratories of Consent: Vaccine Science in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1779-1840—examines transformations in medical ethics and immunization in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Spanish Atlantic world. It argues that mothers, children, and the enslaved were instrumental in developing vaccine science and the ethics that regulated it, as young bodies became the primary conduit by which doctors reproduced and circulated smallpox vaccine throughout the empire. By analyzing the relationship between autonomy and expertise, it considers how mothers and the enslaved challenged authorities’ idea of consent—envisioned as a patriarchal form of exclusion—as immunization became embedded in an empire-wide struggle over parental rights, individual freedom, and imperial hierarchies challenged by the unrest of revolution. Spanish royal officials defined medical consent as a natural right of fathers, predicated on the belief that men were uniquely capable of rational thought. Heads of household were allowed to evaluate the efficacy of immunization and make medical decisions for their wives, children, and slaves. Laboratories of Consent explains how colonial authorities came to this decision, as well as why it was so frequently contested by doctors, family members, and officials who each had their own ideas about the value and utility of vaccine science. Studying immunization through the question of consent exposes the fragility of the gendered and racialized assumptions upon which scientific expertise was legitimized and the medical ethics by which they were maintained.
I am also working on two additional projects that explore the role of Maya codices in 19th century epidemiology (especially of yellow fever); and a history of atlantic midwives and their exchange of reproductive health knowledges during the Seven Years War.