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

• (with Dana Yarak) “La Primera Línea: Latina/o Frontline Health Workers During COVID-19’s First Wave,” U.S. Latino and Latina Oral History Journal Vol. 5, 2021: 10-32.
• "Sanctuary or Danger: Hospitals and Health Care in the United States," Migration and Society 4 (1), 2021: 62-75.
• "The U.S. Can't Afford Not to Provide Insurance to Everyone—and This Pandemic Proves It," Newsweek, April 8, 2020.
• "The American Hospital: Charity or Profit Center?" in Martin Gorsky, Margarita Vilar-Rodriguez, and Jeronia Pons-Pons, The Political Economy of the Hospital in History (University of Huddersfield Press, 2020).
• "Writing History as it Happens: A Historian's Dilemmas in a Time of Health Care Reform" in Solvieg Julich and Sven Widmalm, eds., Communicating the History of Medicine: Perspectives on Audience and Impact (Manchester University Press, 2020).
• "¡Viva La Clinica!: The United Farm Workers' Fight for Medical Care," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 93 (4), Winter 2019: 518-549.
• "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, “Outside/Inside: Immigration, Migration, and Health Care,” National Library of Medicine Exhibition Program.
• 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