Beth Linker
· Department ChairUniversity of Pennsylvania · History and Philosophy of Science
Active 2005–2024
About
Beth Linker is a historian of medicine, disability, and the body, serving as Chair of the Department of the History and Sociology of Science and holding the Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences. She is a former physical therapist with an M.A. in bioethics, and her research focuses on how disability becomes defined, medicalized, and marginalized in modern U.S. history. Her work critically analyzes health and cultural inequities, especially as they affect those with disabilities. Linker is the author or editor of three books, with her most recent publication, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024), examining how failing posture became a scientific and cultural inflection point in the late nineteenth century, and how this led to a societal fear of non-normative, disabled bodies that persisted for the next century.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Psychology
- Political Science
- Art history
- Medicine
- Law
- Media studies
- Internal medicine
- Financial economics
- Art
- Epistemology
- History
- Philosophy
- Economics
- Psychoanalysis
- Virology
- Anthropology
Selected publications
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-01-01
book1st authorCorrespondingDisability Futures, Scientific Ableism, and the Making of Modern Epidemics
Osiris · 2024
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Epistemology
- Sociology
While disability historians have problematized the end of epidemics, this essay focuses instead on the crucial role that disability has played in the making of modern epidemics. Taking the so-called poor posture epidemic of the twentieth century as a case study, this essay explains how officials used the logic of anticipatory disability to create widespread fear and concern about the health ramifications of excessive slouching. I argue that the creation of the poor posture epidemic rested on a system of scientific ableism wherein the professional class created and promoted classificatory tools, measurements, and new ways of seeing in order to crudely distinguish disabled (including potentially disabled) bodies from nondisabled bodies. The antislouching crusade was pitched as a kind of disability awareness campaign, but the ultimate goal was disability eradication.
Princeton University Press eBooks · 2024-04-09
book1st authorCorresponding:<i>Bodies of Work: The First World War and the Transnational Making of Rehabilitation</i>
Isis · 2024-11-25
article1st authorCorrespondingPrinceton University Press eBooks · 2024-05-21 · 1 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingThe strange and surprising history of the so-called epidemic of bad posture in modern America—from eugenics and posture pageants to today’s promoters of “paleo posture” In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century’s worth of nude “posture” photos of college students. In this riveting history, Beth Linker tells why these photos were only a small part of the incredible story of twentieth-century America’s largely forgotten posture panic—a decades-long episode in which it was widely accepted as scientific fact that Americans were suffering from an epidemic of bad posture, with potentially catastrophic health consequences. Tracing the rise and fall of this socially manufactured epidemic, Slouch also tells how this period continues to feed today’s widespread anxieties about posture. In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement and fears of disability gave slouching a new scientific relevance. Bad posture came to be seen as an individual health threat, an affront to conventional race hierarchies, and a sign of American decline. What followed were massive efforts to measure, track, and prevent slouching and, later, back pain—campaigns that reached schools, workplaces, and beyond, from the creation of the American Posture League to posture pageants. The popularity of posture-enhancing products, such as girdles and lumbar supports, exploded, as did new fitness programs focused on postural muscles, such as Pilates and modern yoga. By 1970, student protests largely brought an end to school posture exams and photos, but many efforts to fight bad posture continued, despite a lack of scientific evidence. A compelling history that mixes seriousness and humor, Slouch is a unique and provocative account of the unexpected origins of our largely unquestioned ideas about bad posture.
Isis · 2021
1st authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Sociology
- Media studies
Physical Therapy in the Time of Pandemic: Then and Now
Physical Therapy · 2020 · 2 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Medicine
- Psychology
- Virology
FOUR. Maximalist Medicine at Walter Reed
2019-12-31
article1st authorCorresponding2019-12-31
article1st authorCorrespondingTracing Paper, the Posture Sciences, and the Mapping of the Female Body
University of Pittsburgh Press eBooks · 2019-06-18
book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 2 shared
Whitney E. Laemmli
Carnegie Mellon University
- 2 shared
Nancy J. Hirschmann
- 1 shared
Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
Vancouver Island University
- 1 shared
Julie Brown
Neuroscience Research Australia
- 1 shared
Kate Trant
- 1 shared
Emily K. Abel
- 1 shared
Georgina Aronin
- 1 shared
Clare Quinn
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
Awards & honors
- Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Te…
- Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Sc…
- Fellowship at the Barbara Bates Center for the History of Nu…
- Fellowship at the Wolf Humanities Forum
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