Beth Linker - Media

Slouch featured in the New Yorker

illustration by Anna Haifisch

What is it about posture that evokes such visceral feelings? Beth Linker, a history-of-science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told me, "If I tell people the title of the book I'm working on"—"Slouch: Fearing the Disabled Body"—"they immediately sit up straight, as if I'm judging them." She went on, "For a long time, posture was something that only queens and kings and the upper class would talk about. It was seen as a matter of discipline and appearance. Then, in the nineteenth century, Darwin and other evolutionary scientists claimed that human posture led to brain development." That, she said, led to doctors linking poor posture and poor health. --Patricia Marx, "Is the Pandemic Breaking our Backs?," the New Yorker, March 22, 2021

Slouch in Penn Today

"Examining 20th-century America's Obsession with Poor Posture" Penn Today, 2018

War's Waste featured in Ric Burns documentary

Photo credit Kimberly Paynter/WHYY

Listen to an interview with me (left) and Ric Burns (right), director of the 2015 documentary A Debt of Honor. To get an overview of the film, see the trailer.

Media

KQED Interivew: Beth Linker's Book 'Slouch' Recounts History of 'Posture Panic'

LISTEN HERE

Toward a History of Ableness for All of Us, the DHA blog

A black and white photo of three white women holding trophies, standing next to x-ray images of their supposed perfect spines.

Winners of an annual ACA contest, Marianne Baba, Lois Conway and Ruth Swensen, circa 1956.
Kirkland/Time Archives, public domain.

"Toward a History of Ableness," for All of Us, the Disability History Association's blog. In this piece, I attend to the notions and expectations of ableness in order to denaturalize both normativity and disability, a move that is similar to what scrutiny of whiteness brought to race studies three decades ago.

AHA Member Spotlight: Beth Linker

an interview in which I reveal the most fascinating thing I've found in the archives, my favorite blogs, movies, and more!

The Boston Globe "The VA: Trouble From the Start"

A 1924 photo of female workers at the Veterans' Bureau, the agency that would go on to be the Veterans' Administration

"The cost of military engagement is inseparable from the long, slow, and massively expensive process of helping those who suffer battle wounds. For a nation that prides itself on military preparedness, frank and honest discussions about the aftermath of war are in short supply." --Beth Linker, "The VA: Trouble From the Start"

The Huffington Post "The Great American Concussion"

"When just a few years ago NFL-employed physicians denied any linkage between repeated game-related head trauma and late life dementia, such disavowals could only seem plausible to a nation suffering from historical amnesia, a nation that had forgotten the voices from our past who knew better."--Beth Linker, "The Great American Concussion"

USA Today "World War's I's Legacy: Modern Health Care for Veterans"

"At the end of World War I in 1918, rehabilitation wards and their allied health staff became a permanent part of veteran care — a status that was solidified with the establishment in 1921 of the Veterans Bureau (later the Veterans Administration and now the Department of Veterans Affairs). From World War I on, veterans would benefit from a federally funded health care system." --Beth Linker, "World War I's Legacy"

Selected Works

Books

Slouch

"Slouch is a skillfully researched, engrossing account of a socially engineered epidemic that captured the public imagination for the better part of a century."—Shelf Awareness

"Slouch is a gripping read that made me sit up a little straighter in my chair—and taught me how that very impulse, while no longer imposed by campus medical inspectors or stiff 'posture fashion,' has come to be so ingrained in the American psyche."--Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

"Who would have thought that slouching could be so riveting? Acclaimed historian Beth Linker has written an enthralling account of posture, prejudice, panic, and disability. Essential reading for anyone curious about bodies."—Joanna Bourke

A richly detailed book about what it meant—and means—to be 'posture conscious.'"—Jaipreet Virdi

Beth Linker does a wonderful job of straightening out the story of bent backs!"—Jonathan Marks

War's Waste

Voted one of the top 100 Must-Read History of Medicine Books -Book Riot

"One of the most important and readable studies to appear in recent years" -Bulletin of the History of Medicine

"A rich and important history" -Journal of the American Medical Association

"Its relevance to today's challenging realities makes Linker's penetrating study of an earlier war relevant to a wide spectrum of potential readers." -Charles E. Rosenberg

Civil Disabilities

"Insightful, comprehensive, and personal" - Sex and Disability

"An illuminating and truly educational book." - Lennard Davis

"Civil Disabilities leaves no doubt that disability is central to the history, theory, and acts of citizenship." -Kim Nielson

Quick Links

Beth Linker @ Penn

Please visit my University of Pennsylvania faculty webpage

Beth Linker @ academia.edu

Access to many of my academic articles and syllabi