Allan M. Brandt | Enduring Stigma: Historical Perspectives on Disease Meanings and Their Impacts

This lecture will examine the history of disease stigma in a broad social and cultural context. Stigmatized diseases and conditions are an enormous problem for individuals and groups who are subject to prejudice, discrimination, isolation, and the violation of basic human rights. Stereotyped assumptions, beliefs, and values attached to these diseases inflict multiple harms on those who find themselves in the shadow of stigma; they also have profound effects on access to services, health care and its delivery, as well as health disparities, both here in the U.S. and around the globe. Utilizing a range of historical and current examples from cancer to AIDS; from disability to addiction, this lecture will explore the history of the social, cultural, and political production of stigma as well as interventions and policies for its reduction.

About the Speaker

Allan M. Brandt is the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, where he holds a joint appointment between the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on historical and ethical aspects of health, disease, medical practices, and health policy in the 20th century. Brandt received a Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the William H. Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine for The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (Basic Books, 2007), which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. A former Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Brandt has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

About the Series

Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop

Sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center and made possible by support from Linda Randall Meier, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.