Iron Curtain, Iron Lungs: Polio Epidemics in Cold War Hungary 1952 -1963
Child receiving Sabin vaccine in Budapest. Népszava, December 15, 1959 p1. Photograph by György Gonda.
The dissertation concentrates on the politics of polio epidemics in Hungary as they reflect on international public health policies, professional and familial roles, and concepts of bodily production. The project cuts across disciplines, entwining the fields of gender history, history of medicine, childhood and disability studies, and the history of international relations. By exploring an Eastern European history of polio with an broad geographical perspective, the dissertation contributes to the thus far sporadic history of the disease in Europe, and to a mostly unexplored history of health and medicine in Eastern Europe.
