Ryan Myers 

About:

I am a first year History PhD Student whose research interests lay in the ways in which disease and medicine interacted with American militarization and armed conflict in the late early modern and modern time periods. Current research that I am working on is the role Yellow Fever had in the American South during the Civil War. Whether it be General Butler and his public health and quarantine reform or the military medicine used in field hospitals and naval ships, Yellow Fever had far reaching consequences for both the Union and Confederacy while fighting the Civil War. 

However, my research has seen me look at times and peoples who do not fit my research interests. For instance, my  most recently completed research, a more public history project titled Drugged Dissent, looked at the Soviet abuses of Psychiatry and Pharmacology in the effort to silence dissent. This work will be highlighted at the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society, a Baylor Libraries Special Collection. I have also done extensive research on the role of Atlantic Empire in the evolution of medicine in both Europe and the New World and the ethical questions raised by these discoveries. I have also looked at the archeology and primary sourcing detailing the health and medicine of The Vikings and Nords through physical remains like bone analysis and parasitology or through the almost mythic stories of the sagas and early medical manuals like the Bald’s Leechbook.

While not researching, I work as a Teaching Assistant in the History Department and is a fellow in the Presidential Fellowship Program at the University of South Carolina.