Judith Walzer Leavitt

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Judith Walzer Leavitt is Rupple Bascom and Ruth Bleier Professor of History of Medicine, History of Science, and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published multiple books and articles on women's health, including a study of Mary Mallon ("Typhoid Mary"), a history of childbirth in America, and a history of public health in Milwaukee. She is the wife of Waisman Center medical director Lewis Leavitt and the sister of political theorist Michael Walzer.

Her study of childbirth in America was a signal contribution to both medical history and women's studies. It traced the movement of childbirth from the home to the hospital and showed the complex interplay between women's desire for safe childbirth and the danger of losing control in the new hospital environment. It traced as well the effect of medicalization of childbirth on traditional friendship and loyalty networks of women developed on the basis of reciprocal care during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum demands.

Her work on the story of Typhoid Mary broke new ground in placing issues of the contesting interests between public health and personal freedom at the forefront of medical historians' examination of the history of public health with loud echoes of relevancy to the present day public health management of emerging new infectious diseases such as SARS.

She is a past president of the American Association for the History of Medicine and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1 Education
2 Employment
3 Published works
4 External links

[edit] Education

Leavitt received her B.A. from Antioch College in 1963. She received a M.A.T., M.A. and PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1975.

[edit] Employment

Leavitt has been a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1975. From 1981-1992, she served as chair of the Department of Medical History and Bioethics. She also served as Associate Dean for Faculty in the University of Wisconsin Medical School from 1996-1999.

[edit] Published works

"Strange young women on errands, obstetric nursing between two worlds," Nursing History Review, 6(1998): 3-24.
Women and Health in America: Historical Readings. Second revised edition, ed. Leavitt J.W. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).
Leavitt JW, Numbers RL, eds. Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health (Third Edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).
"Gendered expectations: Women and early twentieth century public health." In: U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays, eds. Kerber L, Kesslar-Harris A, Sklar K.K. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health, (Beacon Press, 1997).
"A worrying profession: The domestic environment of medicalpractice in the mid-nineteenth century." Garrison Lecture, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1995;69: 1-29.
Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750-1950, (Oxford University Press, 1986).
The Healthiest City : Milwaukee and the politics of health reform, (Princeton University Press, 1982).
Ronald L. Numbers and Judith Walzer Leavitt, eds. Wisconsin Medicine: Historical Perspectives (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981).
Guenter B. Risse, Ronald L. Numbers, and Judith Walzer Leavitt, eds. Medicine without Doctors: Home Health Care in American History (New York: Science History Publications, 1977).