Dana P. Landress

Dana P. Landress is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in 19th-20th century U.S. medical history with a focus on the South. Her work interrogates nutritional diseases, structural racism, and community health activism through social, labor, and oral history methodologies.

Her academic credentials include:

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
• M.A., University of California, Berkeley
• B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Landress's research centers on pellagra's socio-political dimensions in the segregated South, southern foodways, and diasporic medicinal traditions. She is completing a book under contract with the University of Chicago Press on pellagra's social history and co-editing a Vanderbilt University Press volume documenting post-Covid-19 community healthcare interventions. Her methodological blend of social and oral history reveals how economic inequality shapes patient-provider interactions.

Recent publications demonstrate concentrated exploration of pellagra's intersection with incarceration, disaster response, and gendered health activism in the American South, emphasizing visual culture and racial disparities in public health systems.

Her scholarly contributions have earned significant recognition:

• American Association of University Women Fellowship (2021-2022)
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (2019-2020)
• Louise Gloeckner Fellowship (2020)
• Reynolds Finley Dissertation Fellowship (2020)
• U.C. Berkeley Public Health Research Award (2019)
• Southern Historical Collection Fellowship (2019)
• NSF Research Grant (2018)

Landress advises graduate students including Kayleigh Larsen and serves as advisory editor for Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society. Her research is funded by AAUW, Mellon Foundation, and NSF grants supporting her work on health inequities and historical public health crises.

She collaborates with healthcare providers and activists on community-centered projects documenting Southern health interventions, particularly in post-pandemic contexts and historical disaster responses.