Faculty and Staff

Leslie J. Reagan

Department of History
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
810 S. Wright Street
Urbana, IL  61801
email:  lreagan@uiuc.edu

Medical Humanities and Social Sciences Program
University of Illinois, College of Medicine
506 S. Matthews
Urbana, IL  6180

Education:

University of Wisconsin, Madison. American Women's History Program. Ph.D. in American History, 1991.
University of California, Davis B.A. in Economics with Honors, 1981.  Minor in History.

Professional Appointments

Associate Professor with tenure, History Department; Medical Humanities and Social Sciences Program in the College of Medicine; Gender and Women's Studies Program, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, (UIUC) 1998–present.  Associate Professor of Law, 2005–.  Assistant Professor of History, Medicine, Gender and Women’s Studies, 1992-9

Visiting Assistant Professor and Visiting Research Fellow, The Johns Hopkins University, Department of History and Institute of the History of Medicine, 1991-92.

Scholastic Awards and Honors

James Willard Hurst Book Award, 1998, Law and Society Association, for When Abortion Was a Crime:  Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973.

Outstanding Academic Book of the Year, 1997 from Choice for When Abortion Was a Crime.

President's Book Award, 1995, Social Science History Assn. for When Abortion Was a Crime.

Honorable Mention, Gustavus Myers Award, 1998, for When Abortion Was a Crime.

Louis Pelzer Memorial Award, 1990, from the Organization of American Historians for "'About to Meet Her Maker':  Dying Declarations, Inquests, and the Investigation of Criminal Abortion Deaths, Chicago, 1895-1940."  (Published in the Journal of American History.)

Fellowships and Research Grants (recent)

National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Library of Medicine, 2004-06.
UIUC Campus Research Board, 2006.
James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Research Fellowship, UCLA, 2004.
IPRH Grants for Medicine/Science Reading Group, 2003-06.
Rockefeller Archive Center Research Fellowship, 2003.
UIUC Campus Research Board, 2003-04.
UIUC Campus Research Board, 2003.
Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, UIUC, 2001-02.

ACOG-Ortho-McNeil Fellowship in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2001.
Social Science Research Council, (Research Adviser), 2000-01, 1998-99.

Current Research Projects

Unexpected:  Miscarriages, Birth Defects, and Pregnancy Politics in Twentieth-Century America (working title, under contract with University of California Press.)

Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Education and Entertainment through Film and Television in the United States, edited collection by Leslie J. Reagan, Paula Treichler, and Nancy Tomes.

Selected Publications

When Abortion Was a Crime:   Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973 (University of California Press, 1997; soft cover, 1998).

“Projecting Breast Cancer: Health Education Movies in the 1940s-1950s,” in Medicine’s Moving Pictures, ed. by Leslie J. Reagan, Paula Treichler, and Nancy Tomes, forthcoming.

“Law and Medicine,” Cambridge History of Law in America, ed. by Christopher Tomlins and Michael Grossberg, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2006), in press.

“From Hazard to Blessing to Tragedy: Representations of Miscarriage in Twentieth-Century America,” Feminist Studies 29:2 (Summer 2003):  356-378.

“Crossing the Border for Abortions:  California Activists, Mexican Clinics, and the Creation of a Feminist Health Agency in the 1960s,” Feminist Studies, special issue on Women and Health, 26:2 (Summer 2000): 323-348.  Reprinted in American Social Movements: The Abortion Rights Movement (Gale, forthcoming) and  Women, Health and Nation: Canada and the United States Since 1945 (2003).

“Medicine, Law, and the State: The History of Reproduction,” Companion to American Women’s History, ed. by Nancy A. Hewitt (New York and London:  Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 348-365.

“Victim or Accomplice?: Crime, Medical Malpractice, and the Construction of the Aborting Woman in American Case Law, 1860s-1970,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 10th anniversary issue, 10:2 (2001): 311-332.

"'About to Meet Her Maker':  Women, Doctors, Dying Declarations, and the State's Investigation of Abortion, Chicago, 1867-1940," Journal of American History 77:4 (March 1991):  1240-1264.

"Engendering the Dread Disease:  Women, Men, and Cancer," American Journal of Public Health, 150th anniversary issue, 87:11 (November 1997):  1779-1787.

Editorial Board Member for Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Gender and History, and Journal of Women’s History.

01/06