Hosted by the Center for Bioethics
Join the NYU Center for Bioethics for a colloquium with Dr. Elisabeth M. Yang of the University of Leeds, whose research examines the history of infant health and science. Drawing on her project, Constructing Moral Babies: The Medical and Scientific Enterprise of Infancy in Nineteenth-Century America, Dr. Yang will show how physicians, scientists, and other experts debated whether infants were moral and spiritual beings, and how that agency could be understood and directed. While historians have typically viewed the rise of infant study and pediatrics through a physiological lens, her work uncovers how morality was understood as a religious, philosophical, and even physiological phenomenon. Attendees will gain a new perspective on the origins of modern pediatrics and on today's fascination with the inner lives of babies, from university "baby labs" to the home nursery. The talk will be of interest to anyone working at the intersection of medicine, history, ethics, and child health.