Northern Illinois University
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Current Research 

Undocumented immigrants and the right to health care; health care social movements.

Major Publications

• "Undocumented, Uninsured, Unafraid." Dissent, Spring 2018.
• Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930. The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Patients as Policy Actors. Co-edited with Nancy Tomes, Rachel Grob, and Mark Schelesinger. Rutgers University Press, 2011.
• The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America. The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 
• "Restraining the Health Care Consumer: The History of Deductibles and Copayments in U.S. Health Insurance." Social Science History 30 (4), Winter 2006. 
• "Emergency Rooms: The Reluctant Safety Net." In Rosemary Stevens, Charles Rosenberg, and Lawton R. Burns, eds., History and Health Policy: Bringing the Past Back In. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. 
• "Sympathy and Exclusion: Access to Health Care for Undocumented Immigrants in the United States." In Keith Wailoo, Julie Livingston, and Peter Garbaccia, eds., A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and the Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 
• "Scientific Racism, Insurance, and Opposition to the Welfare State: Frederick L. Hoffman's Transatlantic Journey." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2 (April, 2003): 150-190. 
• "Health Care Reform and Social Movements in the United States." American Journal of Public Health 93 (January, 2003): 75-85. 

Public History

Guest curator, "For All the People: A Century of Citizen Action in Health Care Reform," National Library of Medicine.

Teaching Interests 

U.S. History, History of Medicine, Constitutional History, Research Methods, Latino History.

Courses Taught

• HIST 261 American History Since 1865 
• HIST 361 History of Health and Medicine in the U.S.
• HIST 368 History of Chicago
• HIST 374 U.S. Latino History
• HIST 380 U.S. Constitutional History
• HIST 495 Senior Thesis 
• Graduate Reading Seminar in History of Medicine
• Graduate Research Seminar in History of Medicine