admin Kirsten Ostherr, the Founding Director of the Medical Humanities Program at Rice and Chair of the Department of English, has been awarded with the 2021 Michael E. DeBakey Fellowship in the History of Medicine. This fellowship offers the prestigious opportunity for the selected scholars to conduct research in the largest medical library of the world- the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
The DeBakey Fellowship
The Fellowship is named after Michael E. DeBakey who was a renowned surgeon, educator, and medical statesmen. His pioneering work was indeed transformational for the field of cardiovascular surgery. His contributions have been invaluable in augmenting medical education standards and were essential in the development of the national healthcare policy. DeBakey’s inventions included the roller pump, artificial hearts and ventricular assist pumps. He was a driving force in building the Baylor College of Medicine into a premier medical center, where he trained generations of top surgeons from all over the world.
This prestigious DeBakey Fellowship provides a reserve up to $10,000 to fund onsite research in the various historical archives of the library spanning across more than 10 countries. The NLM collections also include several reputed Michael DeBarkey papers as well as those penned by the other significant luminaries in the field of science and medicine.
Computational Health Research
Ostherr’s Fellowship-winning research project was titled “The Visual History of Computational Health” and explored the intersectional position and plurality of the discipline of Medical Humanities. Her research explores how the future of computers in healthcare was represented by people who developed experimental techniques from the 1960s to the 1980s. Upon winning this prestigious Fellowship, Ostherr remarked, “I’m absolutely thrilled about this and can’t wait to visit the archive at NLM to conduct my research once the pandemic conditions allow.”
Apart from Ostherr, three other scholars have been named as recipients of this prestigious Fellowship. Scottie Hale Buehler, a visiting research affiliate with the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Historical Studies, will research health care in U.S. prisons. Jessica L. Adler, associate professor at Florida International University, will research the history of midwives in the French Atlantic.
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