State Library of Pennsylvania Lunch and Learn Series
“Bacteria, Pathology,
and a History of Public Health”
Rare Collections Open House and
Guest Speaker Nicole Welk-Joerger
Where: State Library of Pennsylvania, Green Room and Rare Collections Rooms. Ground Floor Forum Building, 607 South Drive, Harrisburg, PA
When: August 30 at 12:00 PM
Rare Collections Reading Room will open after the presentation.
The featured speaker is Nicole Welk-Joerger, originally from Lancaster County. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania in the History and Sociology of Science, with research interests in agricultural and animal science. She is active in studying the relationships between humans and animals and how these relationships have changed our understandings of biology, technology, nutrition and the environment. Ms. Welk-Joerger is a graduate of Temple University where she completed her B.A. with a double major in Art History and Anthropology. Before coming to the University of Pennsylvania, she completed an M.A. in Anthropology at Brandeis University. Her Master’s thesis was entitled Cyber-assemblage milking: Animal nutritionists, Amish farmers, and the building of predictable farming models. Using ethnographic research from Pennsylvania, she argued that new understandings of cattle have encouraged Amish farmers to reevaluate the role of agricultural technologies within their community.
The State Library of Pennsylvania holds many works concerning early public health concerns. View the history of medicine and the progressive understanding of public health through our Pennsylvania historic documents. Come see these fascinating discoveries from a century ago or more in the Rare Collections Room of the State Library, after Ms. Welk-Joerger’s presentation.
As part of the State Library’s August Open House on Bacteriology, Pathology and Public Health, Ms. Welk-Joerger will discuss the history of pasteurization and milk production. The presentation will be at 12:00 noon on August 30 in the Green Room on the Ground Level of the Forum Building.
For more information contact Ellen Shenk at 783-5969 or ellshenk@pa.gov.