Rebecca Ellis

Post Doctoral Fellow in the Roots of Contemporary Issues Program
Fulbright Fellow

Contact Information:
Office: Wilson-Short Hall 345
Office Phone: 509-335-5570
Email: rebecca.ellisdodson@wsu.edu

Current History 105 Issues Taught:
Humans and the Environment: Consumption and Conservation
Diverse Ways of Thinking: Disability and the Concept of Normal
Globalization: Global Pandemics
Inequality: Inequality in Public Health and Medicine
Roots of Contemporary Conflicts: The Drug War

Other History Courses
The Social History of Modern Medicine

About Dr. Ellis
Dr. Ellis is an instructor in the Roots of Contemporary Issues program at Washington State University. She graduated in May 2016 from the University of New Mexico with a doctorate in Latin American History specializing in the histories of labor, gender, and disability in Argentina. Her manuscript, “Dignified Labors: Work, Gender, and Blindness in Buenos Aires, 1890-1942” dissects the ways in which gender became an integral mechanism by which blind and sighted activists came to separate dignified labor for the blind from charity. The manuscript draws from Dr. Ellis’s dissertation, “‘Basically Intelligent:’ The Blind, Intelligence, and Gender in Argentina, 1880-1939.” Her dissertation examined the ways that blind leaders and sighted advocates for the blind attempted to differentiate the blind as “safe” in an era of eugenic claims about the dangers of inherited disability.

Dr. Ellis conducted research for her dissertation with the aid of a Fulbright International Research Fellowship, the Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship and the Latin American and Iberian Institute Dissertation Fellowship. Her article, “Making Useful Men: The Roman Rosell Institute and Asylum for the Blind, 1933-1950” will be published in the forthcoming volume Phallacies: Historical Intersection of Disability and Masculinity from Oxford University Press.