Suffering Humanity and Scientific Medicine: A Global Health Ancestry Story

Please join us for Dr. Claire Wendland's lecture, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Were people of African descent disease-resistant or exceptionally vulnerable? Did their cultural practices protect individual and social health, or were they harmful and backward? Such questions preoccupied British colonial officials and US Progressives alike in the early 20th century. Both medicine and anthropology generated pseudoscientific answers that pathologized Africans and justified white domination, but voices in both disciplines also pushed back against spurious racial hierarchies. Widely traveled African intellectuals—including Malawi’s first medical doctor (and sometime anthropologist), Daniel Sharpe Malekebu—played a significant role in these discussions. Their experiences offer lessons for global health today.

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