Sasha Mullally
Dr. Sasha Mullally, Associate Professor, Department of History University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB
Sasha Mullally holds a doctorate in history from the University of Toronto, where she studied Canadian and American history with a specialization in the social history of medicine and health. Prior to joining the Faculty at the University of New Brunswick in 2009, she was Co-Director of the History of Medicine Program at the University of Alberta (2008-2009), cross-appointed between the Faculty of Arts (History and Classics) and the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry (Division of Studies in Medical Education).
In 2009, she was Visiting Professor at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts, during which time she held a Long-term Fellowship grant from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC). She has also held three postdoctoral fellowships: at the Gorsebrook Research Institute at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS (2006-2008), in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB (2005-2006), and with the History of Medicine Unit at McMaster University, Hamilton, ON (2005).
Courses and Supervision
Dr. Mullally teaches a variety of courses and supervises graduate students in the following fields: the history of medicine and health care, Canadian social history, women’s history and the history of the Atlantic region. She has also developed a joint honours/graduate course on digital history.
The History of Rural Medicine and the lives of "Country Doctors"
Dr. Mullally’s research explores the social and cultural histories of health and medicine in 19th and 20th century North America. Her first book examines the social transformation of rural health in the North American northeast from 1900 to 1950. Through a narrative analysis of rural medical life-writing, it describes the social impact of the shift away from home-based medicine to health care centralized in clinics and hospitals. This project also considers the regional and transborder movement of medical doctors, and offers a comparative framework for understanding key changes in rural health care, a framework inspired by new research in the history of North American borders and borderlands.
Entitled “Unpacking the Black Bag: Country Doctor Stories from the Maritimes and Northern New England, 1900-1950,” it is currently under contract with the University of Toronto Press.
Ongoing and New Research Projects: Borders, Profession, Gender and Health
Following from this, Dr. Mullally has begun a new research project that will explore the gendered professional and community roles of women physicians in rural and small town practices of Nova Scotia and Massachusetts from 1880 to 1930. It investigates the intersections of gender and place in rural medicine a century ago, and seeks to explain unusual clusters of women physicians in some rural areas of both jurisdictions. This project has start-up funds from the University Research Fund at UNB, and the Harrison McCain Fund for New Scholars.
She is also part of two collaborative research projects. She is Principal Investigator on a project, supported by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, which examines the history of “therapeutic craft” as a tool utilized by middle class New England women for rural community uplift as well as social and economic rejuvenation in northeastern North America (1890-1950). Here, Dr. Mullally is interested in the migration and dissemination of therapeutic ideas, aesthetic ideals and personnel trained in a variety of health professions –principally women occupational therapists—from New England urban “heartland” to various rural and remote “hinterlands” of this transborder region.
Finally, she is a Co-Investigator on a history of Medical Diasporas in Canada. Led by Dr David Wright (Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University), the project is funded by SSHRC and Associated Medical Services/Hannah Foundation. With Dr. Wright, she is producing a book that examines the transnational history of physician migration in the second half of the twentieth century, looking 'outward' from Canada.
Recent Scholarship
Select Publications
“Seeing Beyond the Frontier: Maine Borders, the Borderland and American History,” Maine History 47.1 (2013), pp. 5-10.
“Democratizing the Past?: Canada’s History on the World Wide Web,” Settling and Unsettling Memories: Essays on Canadian Public History eds., Nicole Neatby and Peter Hodgins (University of Toronto Press, 2012): 235-264.
“Policing Practitioners on the Periphery: Elite Physicians and Profession-Building in a Bicultural Province, 1920–1939,” Medicine in the Remote and Rural North, 1800-2000, eds. Jim Connor and Stephan Curtis (London: Chatto and Pickering, 2011), pp. 153-68.
with David Wright and Colleen Cordukes, “‘Worse than Being Married’: The Exodus of British Doctors from the National Health Service to Canada, c. 1955-1975,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65, 4(2010): 546-575.
with Margaret Conrad, “Women, History, and the New Information and Communications Technology,” Atlantis 34, 2(2010): 43-54.
“Finding Place in The Big-Little World of Doc Pritham: Telling Medical Tales about Northwoods Maine, 1920s-1970s,” Locating Health: Historical and Anthropological Investigations of Place and Health, eds., Erika Dyck and Christopher Fletcher (London: Chatto and Pickering, 2010), pp. 43-55.
“Between Community and State: Phyllis Lyttle and public health nursing in Cape Breton, 1937-1947,” Acadiensis 38, 2(Fall, 2009): 98-115. (Republished in Making Up the State: Women and the State in Atlantic Canada eds., S. Morton and J. Guildford. Fredericton: Acadiensis Press 2010.)
“Review Article – The Place of Region in the Social History of Medicine in Atlantic Canada,” Acadiensis 37, 1 (Winter/Spring 2008): 138-148.
“Canadian Medical Life-Writing and the Historical Imagination: Unpacking a Cape Breton Country Doctor’s Black Bag,” in Figuring the Social: Essays in Honour of Michael Bliss, eds., Elspeth Heaman, Alison Li and Shelley McKellar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 435-469.
with David Wright, “La Grande Séduction?: The Immigration of Foreign-Trained Physicians to Canada, c. 1954-76,” Journal of Canadian Studies 41, 3(2007): 67-89.
with Edward MacDonald “On National Heritage, Grand Narratives and Making History “Fun”: Founder’s Hall, Prince Edward Island, and the Story of Canadian Nationhood,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 13, 3(2007): 288-294.
Recent Invited and Public lectures
"The Search for 'Some Nice Place': Immigrant Physicians in Remote Industrial Canadian Towns, 1965-1980," Northern Ontario School of Medicine (January 21, 2013).
"The Politics of Memory: Foreign-Trained Physicians in Industrial Towns, 1960-1975," Colloquium on Health Immigration, Institute for Health and Social Policy, McGill University (September 21-23, 2012)
“The Poetics and Heroics of Rural Medicine: Placing Country Doctors in a Golden Age of Medicine, 1920s-1950s,” Niged Rusted Lecture in Medical Humanities (Medical Grand Rounds, Division of Biomedical Sciences), Memorial University of Newfoundland (November 16, 2012).
"The Poetics and Heroics of Rural Medicine: Placing Country Doctors in a Golden Age of Medicine, 1920s-1950s," Canadian-American Studies Lecture Series, University of Maine (October 21-22, 2011).
“Unpacking Dr. Mary’s Black Bag: Gender, Profession and Medicine in rural Massachusetts, 1880s-1920s,” Historic Deerfield Memorial Library and Archives, Deerfield, MA (15/07/09)
“Unpacking the Black Bag: Country Doctors and Narratives of Rural Health Care, 1920s-1970s,” History of Medicine Lecture Series, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC (20/11/08)
“Practicing Public Health in Rural Canada: Interprofessionalism in History,” Studies in Interprofessionalism Lecture Series, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Thunder Bay, ON (10/10/08)
“The Importance of Being a ‘Country Doctor’: Narrative and Identity in 20th Century Rural Health Care,” History of Medicine Lecture Series, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB (03/10/08)
Select Refereed Conference/Colloquium Papers
“Adventures in the Digital Past: Team-Teaching Digital Humanities in the Undergraduate History Curriculum,” Humanities Education Research Association Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah (03-06/03/12)
“Coming into Contact with Therapeutic Craft Arts and Craft Revival, Rural Uplift, and Health Professionals in Canada and the United States, 1920-1950,” Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, University of Victoria-Wellington (06-09/12/11)
“Weaving a Legacy of Health: Dr. Mary Phylinda Dole as the Doctor in Homespun of western Massachusetts, 1920s-1940s,” Social Science History Association, Boston MA (17-20/11/11)
“Teaching Borderlands History,” Roundtable Participant, Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, University of New Brunswick/St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB (01/06/11)
“It was a Country Practice, but I was a Country Girl”: gender and profession in the career of Dr. Mary Dole, 1880s-1920s,” “Edging Forward/Acting Up” Conference, Canadian Committee on Women’s History, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC (12-15/09/10)
“Bordering on Bad Medicine?: Policing the ‘Medical Borderlands’ between New Brunswick and Maine, 1920-1936,” Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, Concordia University, Montreal, QC (31/05/10-01/06/10)
“Everlastingly Sticking at It: The life and work of Mary Dole,” Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Meeting, Indiana University, Bloomington, IA (26/09/09)
“Narratives of Migration; Narratives of Care: Immigrant Physicians in Nova Scotia, 1960-1975,” Atlantic Canada Studies Conference, UPEI, Charlottetown, PE (02/05/09)
“History, Memory and Medical Autobiography: The Evolving "Memoirs” of a Cape Breton Country Doctor, 1930s-1970s” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Miami, FL (26/10/08)
“Writing a Country Doctor’s Life: Oral and Written Narratives of Rural Medicine in Nova Scotia, 1920s-1970s,” The Culture of Print in Science Technology, Engineering and Medicine Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI (12/09/08)
“‘Some of My Best Patients are Men’: Gender, Profession and Making a Medical Living in rural Massachusetts, 1880s-1920s,” Seminar on Gendering Women’s Medicine, 14th Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN. (12-15/06/08)
with David Wright “Border Crossings: The Immigration and Licensing of Foreign-Trained Nurses & Doctors, c. 1967-75 ,” Borders, boundaries and political context in nursing and health care history, Canadian Association for the History of Nursing International Nursing History Conference, Toronto, ON. (5-7/06/08)
“Between Community and State: Practicing Public Health in Rural Cape Breton, 1940s-1950s” Canadian Historical Association Annual Meeting, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (2-4/06/08)
with David Wright, “The Globalization of Canadian Health Care?: The Immigration and Licensing of Foreign-Trained Doctors and Nurses, 1967-1975,” Canadian Society for the History of Medicine Annual Meeting, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (31/05/08-01/06/08)
Other Publications and Presentations
A recent interview with Dr. Mullally about her book, “Unpacking the Black Bag,” is available as June 2011 interview on the radio program Skeptically Speaking with Desiree Shell: http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episodes/117-rural-medicine
See also the online museum exhibit: “A Country Doctor Helps to Change the Face of Medicine: Mary Phylinda Dole (1862-1947).” Website. Changing the Face of Medicine. Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections. 2008.
Office: Tilley 114
Phone: (506)453-5181
