Dr. Jessica Wang

Biography

Jessica Wang works on nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. history, pursuing a wide range of interests related to the history of science and medicine, U.S. political and intellectual history, political theory, urban social history, and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Her recent book, "Mad Dogs and New Yorkers: Rabies, Medicine, and Society in the American Metropolis, 1840-1920," uses social history of a dreaded disease to explore urban social geography and the role of domesticated animals in the nineteenth-century city, emphasizing the centrality of pathological anatomy in American medical imagination and the institutional contexts of medicine, disease, and public health. Her research has earned support from the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Killam Trusts. She is a two-time recipient of fellowships from Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. Wang’s ongoing research includes themes for new book projects on tropical agriculture in the American empire and inter-imperial collusion.

Research Interests

Experience