Deirdre Cooper Owens is a historian of medicine working at the intersection of science, race, and gender. She is the Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and director of the Humanities in Medicine program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, as well as a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians (OAH).

Cooper Owens also serves as director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the oldest cultural institution in the United States. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (University of Georgia Press, 2017) won the 2018 Darlene Clark Hine Book Award in African American women’s and gender history.


Cooper Owens’s Lunchtime Lecture is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Institute’s Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race project.

About the Series

Our virtual Lunchtime Lecture Series is for scholars and anyone curious about the history of science, technology, and medicine. Topics range from rigorous to entertaining, and help expand perceptions of the nature of science and how it’s done.

More events

September 26, 2023
Classes & Workshops

​​Coffee with a Curator: BOLD Histories of Synthetic Color​

In this course Lisa Berry Drago will lead us through the first 150 years of manufactured dyes, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the curation of the BOLD exhibition.

wood shavings on a plate surrounded by small logs
September 28, 2023
Joseph Priestley Society

Origin Materials: Paving the Way Towards a Carbon Negative Future

Tanja Gruber discusses her company’s platform for turning the carbon found in biomass into useful materials.

frontispiece plate of illustrations of the blood spectra
September 30, 2023
For Families

Stories of Science

Join us in our museum EVERY SATURDAY for a family-friendly program that highlights strange and surprising stories from the history of science!

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