Virtual Speaker Series
Join us for the AAHN Virtual Speaker Series! This exciting series features monthly nursing history research talks from January to May and September to December. Free for AAHN members; $30 for non-members.
November Virtual Speaker Series
Date: November 7, 2025
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm ET
Title: The Nurses of Ellis Island: Life and Work Inside the Golden Door
Speakers: Michelle Hehman and Arlene Keeling
Brief Abstract: The Nurses of Ellis Island: Life and Work inside the Golden Door tells the story of the U.S. Public Health Service nurses who cared for more than 150,000 immigrants hospitalized on Ellis Island during the first half of the twentieth century. In the modern hospital complex built between the Main Immigration Building and the Statue of Liberty, these nurses confronted every imaginable illness and injury, caring for vulnerable patients in a challenging environment. They served simultaneously as compassionate caregivers and agents of the state, negotiating their responsibilities in the midst of two world wars, a global pandemic, and increasingly restrictive immigration laws.
This presentation examines both the historical findings and the process behind reconstructing this story. The research drew upon memoirs, government records, and archival materials that gave voice to the Ellis Island nurses, as well as multiple site visits that allowed the authors to immerse themselves in the physical spaces where the nurses lived and worked. The book also reflects a deliberate choice to write in a more narrative and accessible style, one that remains grounded in rigor and historical accuracy but crafted to engage readers beyond academic audiences.
By illuminating the lived experience of nursing at the intersection of immigration and public health policy, and by reflecting on the methodological decisions that shaped the project, this presentation underscores both the need and the value of bringing nursing history to life, as well as the importance of presenting it in ways that resonate widely.
February Virtual Speaker Series
Date: February 6, 2026
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 pm ET
Title: Philanthropic Funding for Nurse-Managed Health Centers in Philadelphia, 1988-2002
Authors: Andre A. Rosario & Julie Fairman
Speaker: Andre Rosario
Brief Abstract: Since 1988, the Independence Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has funded nursing education as well as nurse-managed health centers: clinics where nurse practitioners serve as the primary health-care providers for patients. Although the literature highlights nurses’ autonomy in nurse-managed health clinics, few studies have examined the role of private, non-profit philanthropy in influencing state and federal policy related to nurse practitioners and nurse-managed health centers. This presentation documents the Independence Foundation’s support for its first nurse-managed health centers and its first endowed professorships in nursing. It also highlights the foundation’s role in advocating for state-level Medicaid policies that would support nurse practitioners serving as primary-care providers. Relying on organizational documents, academic nursing publications, and original oral-history interviews with Independence Foundation staff and Independence Foundation Endowed Chairs, this presentation examines key figures in the expansion of the nurse-managed health center model as well as barriers to the model scaling beyond Philadelphia. What started as the Independence Foundation’s funding for academic nursing and for nurse-managed health centers ultimately led to evidence and experiences that the foundation leveraged to define the nurse-managed health center model and to call for expanded scope of practice for nurse practitioners. The new findings presented here elucidate the role of philanthropy in nurse-managed clinics and policy related to the settings.
Missed one of our Virtual Speaker Series sessions?
AAHN members can now watch them for free on our Educational Resources page (log-in required).
Not a member but interested in viewing a session? Fill out our form and let us know which one you'd like to access. Recordings are $15 each for non-members. Please note that it may take up to 72 hours to receive your recording link.
September Virtual Speaker Series
Title: Icons and Illustrations: American Nursing in Iran Through Images and Artifacts
Speaker: Lydia Wytenbroek
Original Date: September 5, 2025
Brief Abstract: This talk explores the history of American nursing involvement in Iran through images and artifacts. It largely focuses on the history of American mission nursing involvement in Iran between 1907 and 1979. It will use photographs to explore the development of mission nursing schools, nursing professionalism, the connection between churches in the United States and mission nursing in Iran, and Iranian nurse activism and resistance. Finally, it will consider the use of images as primary sources and how we can read such images through the lens of colonial photography.
May Virtual Speaker Series
Title: Nursing the Metropolis: the female ward staff of St Bartholomew's hospital in London, 1660-1820
Speaker: Alannah Tomkins
Original Date: May 2, 2025
Brief Abstract:The history of nursing in London before the early nineteenth century used to occasion sweeping generalisations about the flaws of pre-reform nurses (if it attracted any comment at all). In contrast this investigation of the St Bartholomew's Hospital archives showcases the experiences of over 600 women who worked at Barts 1660-1820. Tracing their individual histories, both in the hospital and where possible outside it, provides illustrations of nurses' biographies, the work culture they found at the hospital, and their relationships with one another. This talk draws on material contained in chapter two of my recent book Nursing the English from Plague to Peterloo.
April Virtual Speaker Series
Title: The “Grey Zone” for Women Who Wore White: Jewish Nursing Identity During the National Socialist Regime
Speaker: Jane Brooks
Original Date: April 2, 2025
Brief Abstract: Nursing may be highly feminised profession, built around vocation and self-sacrifice, but it is a respected and respectable profession. When women choose nursing as their work, they feel valued and valuable, both in the identity they place on themselves as a nurse and that which others place on them - their position in society. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the association of the profession with dirt and intimate body care, made nursing unattractive to Jewish women. As the National Socialist regime tightened its grip on the Jews of Germany and then elsewhere in Europe, Jewish women needed work and the community needed nurses. For those Jewish women who then took up nursing, their nurse identity also enabled their survival and humanity. This talk explores the experience of Jewish nurses who engaged in nursing work in ghettos and camps. It exposes the multiple challenges they faced and the moral compromises they needed to make in order to support their co-religionists.
March Virtual Speaker Series
Title: Punishment, Forgiveness, Drunkenness, and Praise: Nurses in Council Minutes of Haslar Naval Hospital, 1755-1775
Speaker: Erin Spinney
Original Date: March 7, 2025
Brief Abstract: Nursing practice at Haslar Naval Hospital was regulated by the Royal Navy’s Sick and Hurt Board. Before 1795, when the position of hospital governor was created, on-the-ground authority was in the hands of medical practitioners through the collective governance of Physician and Council. This paper examines how Haslar’s physician and council navigated the instructions of the Sick and Hurt Board and whether these regulations were always strictly followed when disciplining nurses. Areas for discussion include the complexity of authority in nursing practice during in everyday ward-based medical care. How did nurses execute their authority in these spaces? Why did Physician and Council choose to discipline some nurses and not others despite the strictness of the regulations? Rather than the drunken, ineffective stereotype normally associated with eighteenth-century nurses, the minutes of Physician and Council show a much more complicated story of authority and nursing discipline.
The Nurses of Ellis Island: Life and Work inside the Golden Door tells the story of the U.S. Public Health Service nurses who cared for more than 150,000 immigrants hospitalized on Ellis Island during the first half of the twentieth century. In the modern hospital complex built between the Main Immigration Building and the Statue of Liberty, these nurses confronted every imaginable illness and injury, caring for vulnerable patients in a challenging environment. They served simultaneously as compassionate caregivers and agents of the state, negotiating their responsibilities in the midst of two world wars, a global pandemic, and increasingly restrictive immigration laws.
This presentation examines both the historical findings and the process behind reconstructing this story. The research drew upon memoirs, government records, and archival materials that gave voice to the Ellis Island nurses, as well as multiple site visits that allowed the authors to immerse themselves in the physical spaces where the nurses lived and worked. The book also reflects a deliberate choice to write in a more narrative and accessible style, one that remains grounded in rigor and historical accuracy but crafted to engage readers beyond academic audiences.
By illuminating the lived experience of nursing at the intersection of immigration and public health policy, and by reflecting on the methodological decisions that shaped the project, this presentation underscores both the need and the value of bringing nursing history to life, as well as the importance of presenting it in ways that resonate widely.
|
