Jason E. Glenn

Reparative Historical Inquiry - A Method for Medical Humanities Work in Decolonization

Jason E. Glenn

University of Kansas Medical Center

jglenn4@kumc.edu

Academic medicine is a field in the earliest stages of decolonization.  As scholars engaged in decolonizing work at Academic Health Centers (AHCs) begin to interrogate and challenge the legacies of colonialism, empire and racism that shape the knowledge systems in which we educate learners, we must do so with an eye toward understanding the local histories of colonized medicine.  This presentation introduces the concept of Reparative Historical Inquiry (RHI) as a methodology grounded in a commitment to the idea that the work of decolonization must include the voices of the people who have been harmed by colonization in its local expression.  In essence, RHI represents a type of guerrilla history – history from the perspective of the people who Frantz Fanon called, “les damnés,” or “the wretched of the earth.” In doing so, RHI makes a case for the development of a reparative ethos to orient historians working in colonial sites. This session will share insights gleamed from the National REPAIR Network – a cohort of three AHCs (University of California at San Francisco, University of Kansas Medical Center, and Johns Hopkins University) who have all undertaken history-driven REPAIR (REParations and Anti-Institutional Racism) Projects.  REPAIR Projects are grounded in one question: How can AHCs repair the harms caused by centuries of neglect, exploitation and abuse of people of color in clinical encounters, and by biomedical systems of knowledge that have justified this mistreatment by propagating and upholding theories of race, racial difference, and racial inferiority? Community accountability is a foundational core of all REPAIR Projects, and this presentation / paper outlines RHI as a framework for organizing historically driven community accountability efforts in colonial sites.

BIOGRAPHY

Jason E. Glenn is an associate professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine; the executive director of the REPAIR Project at the University of Kansas Medical Center; and an associate director for the KUMC Center for African American Health. His areas of research specialty include health inequities, mass incarceration, the history of drug policy in the U.S., and the ethics and history of human subject research.  He received a B.A. from Stanford University in 1996, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of science and medicine from Harvard University in 2001 and 2005, respectively.  Dr. Glenn is also a founder and past director of Sobriety High, Inc., a nonprofit organization providing community re-entry services for persons with a history of substance abuse who were returning to their community from prison.  As director of Sobriety High, he was also a co-founder of the Galveston County Restorative Justice Community Partnership and the Galveston County Hope Drug Court.  His current research investigates abusive policing practices as a structural determinant of ill health in so affected communities.