research on disease and health history
Health and colonial change in the North
This project includes articles and a book manuscript in preparation that examine the role of epidemic disease and ecological change as integral to northern colonialism. The book manuscript is focused on the the Mackenzie and Yukon Rivers and their tributaries between 1865 and 1940. Other articles arising from this work address the subject more broadly with particular attention to polio, tuberculosis, and cancer.
The images above show the location of the 1949 polio outbreak (left, map by Liza Piper) and the extent of several other 20th century epidemics across the northern territories (right, map by Eric Leinberger, UBC).
Publications from this project include:
- Piper, L. "Domesticating Poliovirus: Laboratory Monkeys and Vaccine Production." In Landscapes of Science. Ed. T. Adcock. Toronto: NiCHE, 2019.
- Piper, L. "Chesterfield Inlet, 1949 and the Ecology of Epidemic Polio,” Environmental History 20, no.4 (October 2015): 671-698. doi:10.1093/envhis/emv101.
- Piper, L. “Chronic Disease in the Yukon River Basin.” In Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of Place and Health. Ed. E. Dyck and C. Fletcher. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011. Pp. 129-49.
- Piper, L. and J. Sandlos, “A Broken Frontier: Ecological Imperialism in the Canadian North.” Environmental History 12, no.4 (October 2007): 759-95.
Northern Exposures:
Science, Indigenous Peoples, and Northern Contaminants
I am a co-applicant with colleagues from MUN, Wilfrid Laurier University, Trent, and the University of Toronto, on this SSHRC-funded project led by Dr. Arn Keeling (Geography, MUN). This project investigates the environmental history and cultural politics of pollution and toxicity in Canada's northern regions, offering an opportunity to examine the historic and ongoing impacts of contaminants on northern Indigenous communities.
My research for this project has examined historical constructions of food hazards and anxieties. See for example:
- Piper, L. “From Subsistence to Nutrition: The Canadian State’s involvement in food and diet in the North, 1900-1970.” In Ice Blink: Canada’s Northern Environmental History, ed. S. Bocking and B. Martin. University of Calgary Press, 2017.
Woman and children cooking bannock in frying pan over kerosene lamp fire near Igluligaarjuk (Chesterfield Inlet), Nunavut, August 1946.
Credit: G. Hunter / National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque / Library and Archives Canada / PA-141906
- Courses in the history of disease and health
Since 2017, I have taught an introductory course HIST 123 ~ Plague: Disease and Epidemics in History, a one-semester course that examines how diseases arose historically from the interactions of humans with other organisms and their environments, and how changing ecologies have shaped human experiences with disease; what we know and how we know about diseases in the past; and how the history of medicine overlaps with the history of disease. A current syllabus for this lecture-based course is available as a pdf here.
I have previously taught a senior and graduate seminar on health and environments in Canadian history. A previous syllabus from that course is available as a pdf here.
