Medical Center Hour: Posture Myths and Truths

Title: Posture Myths and Truths—The Scientific Origins of Our Health Beliefs About Slouching.

Topic: Many of us have been told at some point in our lives to stand or sit up straight—and usually, with a sense of guilt or embarrassment, we unthinkingly comply. That good posture is beneficial and important to one’s health is a truism that we rarely examine or question. To critically analyze this belief, this talk explores the historical origins of the posture sciences in the early twentieth century. The speaker will explain how, despite a lack of physical evidence, upright posture became a widely accepted indicator of health and failures of form a sign of future disability and disease.

Speaker: Beth Linker, PhD, Department Chair, History and Sociology of Science, Professor, Medical Ethics & Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania.

Beth Linker is the Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science. Her research and teaching interests include the history of science and medicine, disability, health care policy and gender. She is the author of War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago, 2011) and co-editor of Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging (Penn Press, 2014). Her most recent book, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America (Princeton University Press, 2024), is a historical consideration of how poor posture became a feared pathology in the United States throughout much of the twentieth century. For this project, Linker received grants from The American Council of Learned Societies, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The National Institutes of Health and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Seating is limited. Please register to attend.

Questions? Contact Charlene Kaufman.

Filed Under: Events