Brooke Lansing is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation, entitled “With the Strictest Confidence: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth-Century New York City,” explores women’s perspectives on reproductive control, and the gender politics behind its increasing restriction, from 1839-1878. Her study is drawn from largely never-before-studied court records generated from legal investigations of abortion within those years.

In addition to joining the 2020-21 cohort of the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine Fellows, Brooke is the recipient of the 2019-20 Fellowship in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and a recipient of a Larry J. Hackman Research Residency at the New York State Archives. She will teach the undergraduate course “History of American Reproductive Politics” at Johns Hopkins University with the support of a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship in Spring 2021.  Her departmental service has included Co-President of the History Graduate Students Association and Co-Coordinator of the Gender History Seminar. Brooke earned her AB in History with a concentration in Gender and Sexuality from Princeton University in 2014.