History Professor Mallory Szymanski to deliver lecture at Susan B. Anthony Museum and House
Alfred University Assistant Professor of History Mallory Szymanski will deliver a lecture at the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, in Rochester, NY, on Monday, March 13 from 1 to 2:30 pm.
Szymanski’s lecture, “Discerning Doctors from Quacks: the art, science, and social practice of men’s sexual health in late-nineteenth century United States,” will examine mental health issues facing men in the 19th century. Those issues may sound familiar to a modern audience – anxiety, fatigue, indigestion, sexual debilities – but in the 19th century United States, finding reliable information regarding such issues could be difficult.
Szymanski’s lecture explores “two unexpected places men could find such information: evening lectures at the local YMCA and popular novels by neurologist S. Weir Mitchell. Focused on engendering trust, these sources encouraged men to see doctors as confidants, confessors, and friends.”
Find out how to register for the lecture.
Szymanski joined the Alfred University faculty in 2018 and teaches in the Division of Human Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She is a gender historian who writes about medicine and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She also is an assistant producer for the podcast Sexing History and serves as co-editor of Clio and the Contemporary.