Cindy Ermus, Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine in the Department of History, has been named the director of the Humanities in Medicine program effective August 19. She specializes in the history of medicine and the environment, especially catastrophe and public health crisis management, in eighteenth-century France and the Atlantic World.
She is the author of The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World and Urban Disasters, both from Cambridge University Press, and editor of Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South from LSU Press. She is also co-series editor for France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization from the University of Nebraska Press and co-founder and co-executive editor for the peer-reviewed publication AgeofRevolutions.com.
Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Verge, Stat News, The Miami Herald, and El Nuevo Herald, and she has been a guest on BBC World News, Univision, Al-Jazeera, and more.
The interdisciplinary Humanities in Medicine program, part of the College of Arts and Sciences, is designed to support students' learning about the social and cultural contexts of health, illness and medical care—developing a broad understanding of the human side of health care.
Previously, Ermus was an assistant professor and director of the Medical Humanities program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She earned her Ph.D from Florida State University. More information is available on her department webpage and cindyermus.com.
