Circulation of Medical Knowledge in Imperial Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet History

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the circulation of medical knowledge within, across, and beyond Russian Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet spaces from the late nineteenth century to the present. Papers examining the influenza epidemic of 1889-1892, responses to malaria in the 1920s, debates about medical ethics in the interwar period, and bacteriophage therapy in the twentieth century illustrate how a range of topics in medical history are connected by the presenters’ shared interest in asking how medical knowledge is constructed, contested, imposed, and disseminated. Recognizing the diversity of ethnic and national populations within this geographical space, this panel also explores how Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet physicians, health officials, and researchers engaged with international discourses on disease outbreaks, medical professionalism, and infectious diseases. The source materials for these papers include archival documents, oral histories, medical journals, documentary films, conference proceedings, statistical compilations, and mass circulation newspapers. The panel addresses the conference theme of liberation by applying critical epistemology to interrogate medical discourses in ways that illuminate structures of knowledge systems, mechanisms of social power, and the marginalization or silencing of vulnerable communities. Drawing on theoretical interventions in post-colonial science and technology studies, each paper asks how intellectual liberation is advanced by locating human experiences within discourses of institutional power in ways that recognize and celebrate manifestations of humanity.

Sub Unit

• Sociology, Public Health, Education

Chair

• Joshua J. First, U of Mississippi

Papers

• The Topic of the Day: Information Networks in Russia and the World during the 1889-1892 Influenza Epidemic - Tom Ewing, Virginia Tech

• Constructing the Ideal Physician: Soviet Doctors and the International Discourse of Medical Ethics in the 1920s and 1930s - Kenneth Martin Pinnow, Allegheny College

• Escaping the 'Whirlpool of Chauvinistic Frenzy': Transcaucasia’s Efforts to Collaborate on the Fight against Malaria after Soviet Annexation - Molly Walker, Harvard U

• Journeys of the Phage: Ruderal Science and Bacteriophage Chronicles from Twentieth Century Soviet and Post-Soviet Georgia - Rijul Kochhar, Harvard U

Discussant

• Tricia Starks, U of Arkansas