Research Interests: History of medicine and public health; history of religion; women’s history; history of childhood; history of eugenics.

Jamie Marsella is a doctoral candidate. Her research focuses on the intersection between race, gender, and medicine in the development of women and children’s public health programming. Her dissertation is tentatively titled “The Science of Right Living”: Euthenics in Child Welfare Reform, 1900-1930. In treating child welfare reformers as public health workers, her dissertation demonstrates how euthenic thinking permeated public health programs for women and children.

Publications:

“‘An Army of Little Mothers’: Progressive Era Eugenic Maternalism and the Medicalization of Motherhood.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. (Forthcoming)

Can every baby be a Gerber Baby? A century of American baby contests and eugenics. Nursing Clio, August 2022.

A Network of Eugenic Maternalism: Finding the New York Babies’ Welfare Association at the New York Academy of Medicine Library. The New York Academy of Medicine Library Blog. Aug 16, 2022.

“Lynn Downey, ‘Arequipa Sanatorium: Life in California’s Lung Resort for Women’ (Book Review).” New Mexico Historical Review 96, 237-238, (2021).

Shattuck-Heidorn, H., A.C. Danielsen, A. Gompers, J.D. Bruch, H. Zhao, M. Boulicault, J. Marsella, S. Richardson. “Matters Arising: A Finding of Sex Differences or of Similarities?” Nature 597, E7-E9 (2021).

Marsella, J., Boulicault, M. Zhao, H., Gompers, A. “How Did a Small COVID-19 Sex Difference Study with Largely Negative Findings Become Framed as ‘Battle of the Sexes’?” GenderSci Lab Blog, Sep 20, 2021.

Presentations:

“'Where Once There was Only Friction’: Religion, Eugenic Maternalism and the Babies’ Welfare Association 1908-1920.” New York Academy of Medicine, New York, NY, September 7, 2022.

“Gender Representation in Femtech: Leadership, Marketing, and Rhetoric.” Academy Health Annual Research Meeting, Washington D.C., June 5, 2022.

“Better Babies. Better Mothers. Better City”: The Babies Welfare Association and the Better Babies Contest. The American Political History Institute, Boston University. April 8, 2022.

“Religion, Eugenic Maternalism, and the New York Babies Welfare Association, 1908-1919.” Graduate Student Panel Lightning Road, Society for the Gilded Age and Progressive Era at the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, March 31, 2022.
 

Previous Degrees:

B.A., Communications, University of Portland
M.A., History, University of Chicago
A.M., History of Science, Harvard University