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About Laura Stark

Laura Stark is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.

NBN Episodes hosted by Laura:

Medicine April 21, 2023

Diabetes

A History of Race and Disease

Arleen Tuchman

Hosted by Laura Stark
Arleen Marcia Tuchman’s book, Diabetes: A History of Race and Disease (Yale UP, 2020), tells the American history of a disease that continues to defy categorizations. Researchers for more than a …
Policing, Incarceration, and Reform April 13, 2023

Skin Theory

Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory

Cristina Mejia Visperas

Hosted by Laura Stark
An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the …
Science, Technology, and Society December 8, 2022

Democracy's Data

The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them

Dan Bouk

Hosted by Laura Stark
Dan Bouk is a writer, professor, and cultural historian of quantification, or as Bouk puts it, the history all fascinating things “shrouded in the cloak of borningness.” In Bouk’s book …
African American Studies December 8, 2022

The Matter of Black Living

The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930

Autumn Womack

Hosted by Laura Stark
Autumn Womack is a professor of English and of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–193 …
Environmental Studies May 18, 2022

In Whose Ruins

Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire

Alicia Puglionesi

Hosted by Laura Stark
The important new book by Alicia Puglionesi, In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession and the Landscapes of American Empire (Scribner, 2022), is a fat sampler of episodes that show how origin …
Science, Technology, and Society April 28, 2022

Silent Cells

The Secret Drugging of Captive America

Anthony Hatch

Hosted by Laura Stark
It’s no secret that the United States has the most expansive prison system of any nation in the world. And the US carceral system overwhelmingly and unjustly impacts Black and …
Medicine April 28, 2022

Medicalizing Blackness

Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840

Rana A. Hogarth

Hosted by Laura Stark
Medicine and slavery went hand-in-hand. But what was the nature of this vile partnership? In Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840 (UNC Press, 2017), Rana Hogarth …
Science, Technology, and Society December 9, 2021

Fugitive Science

Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture

Britt Rusert

Hosted by Laura Stark
Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture (NYU Press, 2017), by Professor Britt Rusert (UMass-Amherst), has already earned accolades from the American Studies Association and the MLA …
Science, Technology, and Society December 9, 2021

Edges of Exposure

Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal

Noémi Tousignant

Hosted by Laura Stark
What is “capacity”? In science research and health interventions, it typically refers to the relative availability of equipment, infrastructure, personnel, and skills needed to get a job done. Noémi Tousignant’s …
Medicine April 30, 2021

Mass Vaccination

Citizens' Bodies and State Power in Modern China

Mary Augusta Brazelton

Hosted by Laura Stark
Mary Brazelton’s new book, Mass Vaccination: Citizens’ Bodies and State Power in Modern China (Cornell UP, 2019) could hardly be more timely. During the Covid-19 pandemic, China was in the headlines …
Science, Technology, and Society April 29, 2021

Genetic Crossroads

The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity

Elise K. Burton

Hosted by Laura Stark
Elise K. Burton’s important book, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021), documents how race and nation became fused in concept and …
Medicine December 3, 2020

OD

Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose

Nancy D. Campbell

Hosted by Laura Stark
Reducing harm or shrinking the likelihood of accidental death are remarkably contentions projects—in areas from sex education, to pandemic management, to drug use. Nancy Campbell’s important new book, OD: Naloxone …
Medicine December 4, 2019

Breathing Race into the Machine

The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics

Lundy Braun

Hosted by Laura Stark
“We cannot get answers to questions we don't ask.” Lundy Braun’s influential book, Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics (University of …
Medicine December 4, 2019

Garbage Citizenship

Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal

Rosalind Fredericks

Hosted by Laura Stark
They were throwing garbage in the streets. Rosalind Fredericks makes sense of the garbage-scape of Dakar, Senegal in the wake of the 2007 trash “revolts” against the city and country’s …
Science, Technology, and Society April 25, 2018

Building Access

Universal Design and the Politics of Disability

Aimi Hamraie

Hosted by Laura Stark
The Americans with Disability Act passed in 1990, but it was just one moment in ongoing efforts to craft the meaning and practice of “good design” that put people with …
Science, Technology, and Society April 17, 2018

Epigenetic Landscapes

Drawings as Metaphor

Susan M. Squier

Hosted by Laura Stark
Susan M. Squier’s book, Epigenetic Landscapes: Drawings as Metaphor (Duke University Press, 2017) is about development— biological and ecological. It explores how the media (paintings, films, graphics) that experts have …
Science, Technology, and Society November 27, 2017

The Economization of Life

Michelle Murphy

Hosted by Laura Stark
In The Economization of Life (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle Murphy pulls apart the late modern concept of "population" to show the lives this concept has produced and continues to …
Science, Technology, and Society April 19, 2017

Poverty Knowledge in South Africa

A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005

Grace Davie

Hosted by Laura Stark
Apartheid in South Africa formally ended in 1994, but the issue of poverty and what to do about it remained as contentious as it had been a century earlier. In …
Science, Technology, and Society April 18, 2017

Imperial Technoscience

Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India

Amit Prasad

Hosted by Laura Stark
Amit Prasad is widely admired for using Postcolonial Studies to explore questions about science, technology and medicine. In Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and …
Medicine December 7, 2016

Hygienic Modernity

Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China

Ruth Rogaski

Hosted by Laura Stark
Since it was published in 2004, Ruth Rogaski's Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (University of California Press, 2014 reprint) has won four major prizes in …
Sociology April 20, 2016

American Zoo

A Sociological Safari

David Grazian

Hosted by Laura Stark
Urban zoos are both popular and imperiled. They are sites of contestation, but what are those contests about? In his new book, American Zoo: A Sociological Safari(Princeton, 2015), ethnographer David …
General History November 30, 2015

Haeckel's Embryos

Images, Evolution, and Fraud

Nick Hopwood

Hosted by Laura Stark
Nick Hopwood's Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (University of Chicago Press, 2015) blends textual and visual analysis to answer the question of how images succeed or fail. Hopwood is …
General History November 23, 2015

How Our Days Became Numbered

Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual

Dan Bouk

Hosted by Laura Stark
Who made life risky? In his dynamic new book, How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual (University of Chicago Press, 2015), historian Dan Bouk …
Medicine February 9, 2015

Pills for the Poorest

An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa

Emilie Cloatre

Hosted by Laura Stark
Emilie Cloatre's award-winning book, Pills for the Poorest:An Exploration of TRIPS and Access to Medication in Sub-Saharan Africa (Palgrave, 2013), locates the effects--and ineffectualness--of a landmark international agreement for healthcare …