Department of History

In medieval and Renaissance Europe and in the Arab world, it was widely believed that "when Saturn and Jupiter are found in the same area of the zodiac—in other words when they are in conjunction—there are profound effects on Earth," says historian Laura Ackerman Smoller.  

A shift starting in the late 1960s has targeted poor families with unnecessary investigations and child removals at the expense of services, argues Rochester health policy historian and physician Mical Raz.

The communist state’s approach to industrial pig farming foreshadowed its demise, a Rochester historian argues in his new book.

Brianna Theobald scores unusual ‘hat trick’ of academic accolades for her book on Native women’s reproductive histories and activism.

The CDC’s vulnerability to political interference is rooted in its role working in health risk assessment, write University of Rochester health policy historian Mical Raz and her coauthor in a Washington Post op-ed.

History professor Brianna Theobald earns two awards for her book "Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century"

John Barry ’69 (MA) says that the virulence of the 1918 flu made it a very different disease than COVID-19, but the lessons of that pandemic still resonate.

The history of eugenics in the United States leaves today’s migrant women vulnerable, argues University of Rochester history professor Brianna Theobald in a Washington Post “Made by History” op-ed.

Balancing the safety of the general public while accommodating people with legitimate medical challenges is a “new frontier,” says a University health policy expert.

When the World Health Organization was founded, the United States saw it as an extension of US foreign policy, says a University of Rochester historian.