Keith Wailoo - “The Crooked Mile: Menthol Cigarettes, Race Psychology, and the Fashioning of Black Authenticity”

Friday, April 21, 2017 - 11:45am to 1:15pm
African American Studies Dept See map
81 Wall St, Room 201

Keith Andrew Wailoo is Townsend Martin Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University where he teaches in the Department of History and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the former Vice Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School.  He has produced award-winning research and teaches on a range of topics, including drugs and drug policy; race, science, and health; and health policy and medical affairs in the U.S.

His acclaimed books in health, scientific and technological innovation, medical specialization, and the role of identity, gender, race and ethnicity in health include Pain: A Political History (Johns Hopkins, 2015); How Cancer Crossed the Color Line (Oxford University Press, 2011) and The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) which received the Association of American Publishers book award in History of Science. Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (University of North Carolina, 2001) received multiple honors, including the Lillian Smith Book Award for Non-Fiction work elucidating questions of racial justice and inequality, the William H. Welch Medal for best book in the history of medicine, awarded by the American Association for the History of Medicine, the Susanne Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship, the American Political Science Association Award for Best Book published in the area of Public Policies, Social and Legal Dimensions of Ethnic and Racial Politics in the U.S., and the Community Service Award by the Sickle Cell/Thalassemia Patient Network. Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth Century America (Hopkins, 1997) which received the Arthur Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association.

Before joining the Princeton faculty, Professor Wailoo taught in History and in Social Medicine (in the Medical School at UNC Chapel Hill), and at Rutgers University where he was affiliated with History and with the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research. He holds a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering from Yale University.

Contact email: 
afamstudies@yale.edu