Beth Linker

Background

About Beth Linker

Department Chair and the Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science. My research and teaching interests include the history of science and medicine, disability, healthy policy, and gender. I am the author of _Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America_(Princeton, 2024) and _War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America_(Chicago, 2011) which went on to be featured in a Ric Burns documentary titled _A Debt of Honor_ in 2015. I am also the co-editor of _Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging_(Penn Press, 2014). My work has also appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Boston Globe, The Huffington Post, The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, and The American Journal of Public Health.In the spring of 2017, I was awarded the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the university's highest teaching honor. For my research, I have won grants from The American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Institutes of Health, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I am also a yoga teacher (200 hour YTT), having earned my certification at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Before becoming a professional historian, I worked as a physical therapist.