Kelly Suzanne O'Donnell

Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Kelly Suzanne O'Donnell headshot

Contact

Location Old Library 240

Department/Subdepartment

Education

Ph.D., Yale University

M.A., M.Phil., Yale University

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College

Areas of Focus

  • 20th century U.S.
  • women's and gender history
  • history of medicine
  • reproductive health
  • media and popular culture
  • history of technology

Biography

Kelly O'Donnell specializes in 20th-century America with an emphasis on gender and healthcare.

She has published articles on histories of abortion, birth control, and health politics in American culture. She is completing a book, The Pill Hearings: Science, Politics, and Birth Control (under contract, Rutgers University Press), on the scientific and political debates about oral contraceptive side effects in the early 1970s. She has also begun a new project that aims to rewrite the history of American medicine from the perspective of doctors' wives.

Her teaching includes modern U.S. history, the history of medicine, and the history of gender.