Nancy Tomes
Nancy Tomes is Professor and Chair of History at Stony Brook University. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, she holds a BA from the University of Kentucky and a PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania, where she worked with Charles E. Rosenberg. Tomes is the author of three books: A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum Keeping (Cambridge, 1984); (with Lynn Gamwell) Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness Before 1914 (Cornell, 1995); and The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life (Harvard, 1998), which won both the History of Science Society’s Davis Prize and the American Association for the History of Medicine’s Welch Medal. She is a co–editor (with Leslie Reagan and Paula Treichler) of Medicine’s Moving Pictures (Rochester, 2007) and (with Beatrix Hoffman, Rachel Grob, and Mark Schlesinger) of Impatient Voices: Patients as Policy Actors (Rutgers, in press.) While a Fellow at the National Humanities Center, Tomes developed “Medicine and Madison Avenue,” a digital collection on the history of health-related advertising available on the Duke University Library’s website. She is currently working on a book titled Medicine Shop: The Making of the Modern American Health Consumer, 1880-1980. Tomes has been a member of the AAHM since the late 1970s. She has twice served as Program Chair of the Annual Meeting (1992 and 2002) and twice on the Council, including a current term.