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About Maia Woolner

Maia Woolner has a PhD in history from UCLA.
Maia's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Maia:

Science November 24, 2020

Heredity Under the Microscope

Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome

Soraya de Chadarevian

Hosted by Maia Woolner
“What are chromosomes? And what does it mean to treat them as visual objects?” asks Soraya de Chadarevian in her new book, Heredity Under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study …
Science September 18, 2020

Merchants of Medicine

The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century

Zachary Dorner

Hosted by Maia Woolner
In Merchants of Medicine: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century (The University of Chicago Press), medicines embody the hopes of those who prepared, sold, and …
Science January 16, 2019

From the Middle Ages to Today

Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris

Benoît Majerus

Hosted by Maia Woolner
With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle Ages to Today …
Science November 26, 2018

The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe

Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War

Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers

Hosted by Maia Woolner
The prologue to The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War (University of Chicago Press, 2018) begins by provocatively invoking a question American …
Science October 11, 2018

Genetics in the Madhouse

The Unknown History of Human Heredity

Theodore M. Porter

Hosted by Maia Woolner
In Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity (Princeton University Press, 2018), Theodore Porter uncovers the unfamiliar origins of human genetics in the asylums of Europe and …
Science October 9, 2018

Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century

The Side Effects of History

Hervé Guillemain

Hosted by Maia Woolner
Schizophrènes au XXe siècle: des effets secondaires de l’histoire [Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History] is a strong argument in support of the history of psychiatry …
Science May 29, 2018

Performing Neurology

The Dramaturgy of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot

Jonathan W. Marshall

Hosted by Maia Woolner
French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot is perhaps most well known today from the images of his “hysterical” female patients featured in Bourneville’s Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière. While not diminishing the …
Science March 28, 2018

Fixing the Poor

Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century

Molly Ladd-Taylor

Hosted by Maia Woolner
Eugenic sterilization is usually associated with Nazi horrors before and during World War II. But, as Dr. Molly Ladd-Taylor reminds us, it was also practiced in the United States. In …
Science February 14, 2018

On the Other Hand

Left Hand, Right Brain, Mental Disorder, and History

Howard I. Kushner

Hosted by Maia Woolner
In the early twentieth century, Robert Hertz, a French anthropologist, and Cesare Lombroso, the Italian criminologist, debated the causes and consequences of left-handedness. According to Lombroso, left-handed individuals were more …
Science January 31, 2018

Managing Madness

Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada

Erika Dyck and Alex Deighton

Hosted by Maia Woolner
Embracing a multi-perspectival authorial voice, Managing Madness: Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada (University of Manitoba Press, 2017), tells the story of the "last and …