Judith Walzer Leavitt (born July 22, 1940 in New York City) is an American historian.
Judith Walzer graduated in 1963 with a B.A. in social science from Antioch College. In July 1966 she married and assumed the name "Judith Walzer Leavitt". At the University of Chicago she graduated in history with an M.A. in 1966 and a Ph.D. in 1975.
She was the Rupple Bascom and Ruth Bleier Professor of History of Medicine, History of Science, and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, retiring in 2010 as professor emerita. Her book subjects have included a study of Mary Mallon, a history of childbirth in America, and a history of public health in Milwaukee. She is married to Waisman Center medical director Lewis Leavitt, and is the sister of political theorist Michael Walzer. She and her husband have a daughter and a son.
She is a past president of the American Association for the History of Medicine, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Leavitt received her B.A. from Antioch College in 1963, and her M.A.T., M.A., and PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1975.
Published works
Make Room for Daddy: The Journey from Waiting Room to Birthing Room (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). book summary at University of North Carolina Press website
Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public's Health, (Beacon Press, 1996); hbk ; "A worrying profession: The domestic environment of medical practice in the mid-nineteenth century". Garrison Lecture, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 1995;69: 1-29. Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750-1950, (Oxford University Press, 1986). The Healthiest City : Milwaukee and the politics of health reform, (Princeton University Press, 1982). Ronald L. Numbers and Judith Walzer Leavitt, eds. Wisconsin Medicine: Historical Perspectives (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981). ; book details at University of Wisconsin Press website
Guenter B. Risse, Ronald L. Numbers, and Judith Walzer Leavitt, eds. Medicine without Doctors: Home Health Care in American History (New York: Science History Publications, 1977).
References
External links Academic homepage, Department of History of Medicine and Bioethics Academic homepage, Department of the History of Science Article for PBS