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Faculty & Staff

Areas of Expertise

Professor Weisser’s research interests include early modern Britain, the history of the body, health, and healing, and the history of women, gender, and sexuality. She teaches courses on early modern European history, Western Civilization, and the history of medicine.

Degrees

PhD (History of Medicine) Johns Hopkins University
BA (History) Wesleyan University

Professional Publications & Contributions

• Ill Composed: Patients, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England, in progress.
• “Grieved and Disordered: Gender and Emotion in Early Modern Patient Narratives,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 43 (2013): 247-273.
• “Boils, Pushes, and Wheals: Reading Bumps on the Body in Early Modern England,” (Roy Porter Memorial Prize Essay) Social History of Medicine 22 (2009): 321-339.

Additional Information

Spring 2013 Office Hours: TTh (2-4 p.m.)

I study health and healing in early modern Europe from the patient's point of view. I am currently finishing a book that examines the ways gender shaped patients' perceptions and behaviors in seventeenth-century England. I am also beginning new research that explores surgical ailments and patient-surgeon interactions in the 1600s and 1700s. I began studying early modern history as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, where I completed a thesis on seventeenth-century medical astrology—mapping the stars to interpret bodily disorders. I earned a PhD in the History of Medicine from Johns Hopkins University in 2010 and then taught at Princeton University for two years. I joined the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2012.

Professor Weisser's CV