Speaker: Francesca Gibson
Lecture Title: “Hysterical Conceptions: Madness, Reproduction, and Race in the Early Modern British Atlantic World”

📅 Date & Time: Wednesday, September 9, 2026, at Noon
🎥 Virtual Lecture with In-Person Watch Party
📍 Watch Party Location: Library Room 424
🍕 Pizza and snacks will be provided.

Join the Student History Club for a presentation by Francesca Gibson, PhD student in History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The lecture will be streamed live, with an in-person watch party available in Library Room 424 with pizza and snacks. Those unable to attend the watch party may also join the lecture virtually through Zoom.

Gibson’s research explores the intersections of medicine, race, and gender in the early modern Atlantic world, focusing on how ideas about the body, health, and identity shaped medical thought over time.

In this presentation, Gibson will examine how eighteenth-century debates surrounding humoral medicine, nerve theory, and sex difference intersected with the political and social realities of slavery in South Carolina. Drawing from her research on fugitive slave advertisements and other historical sources, Gibson will explore how descriptions of enslaved people’s bodies and behaviors became intertwined with medical and popular ideas about race, reproduction, and mental health.

The lecture will highlight how early medical frameworks influenced later understandings of diagnosis, bodily autonomy, and healthcare, offering insight into the complex relationship between medicine, society, and power in the Atlantic world.