Hilary Smith

Associate Professor

HISTORY
ASIAN STUDIES

Hilary.Smith@du.edu

Hilary Smith's website

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Institutional Affiliation

University of Denver
Department of History

Education

Ph.D., History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 2008
MA, History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 2004
M.Phil., History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 2000
AB, Religion, Princeton University, 1998

Research Interests

Chinese history; history of science and medicine

Regional and Thematic Interests

East Asia
History

Profile

Before coming to DU, I earned degrees in the history of science from Cambridge University (M.Phil.) and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.), and taught at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In my teaching and research, I examine how people living in very different times and cultures from our own made sense of the natural world, including their own bodies. Studying those unfamiliar perspectives can help us understand what’s peculiar about our own views, and appreciate how social, intellectual, and political circumstances inform all knowledge, even modern scientific and medical knowledge.

Selected Publications

Smith, Hilary A.Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed In Chinese Medicine. Stanford, California, USA: Stanford University Press. 2017.https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25648.

Smith, Hilary A.“Absorbing Vitamins: How A Nutritional Paradigm Was Reinvented In Republican China.”In Modern Chinese Foodways. 89-108Cambridge, USA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. 2025.

Eddy, Jared J., Hilary A. Smith, and Jeanne E. Abrams.“Historical Lessons On Vaccine Hesitancy: Smallpox, Polio, And Measles, And Implications For Covid-19.”Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 66, no. 1,(2023):145-159.

Smith, Hilary A.“Food, Health, And Nutrition In Chinese History.”History Compass 20, no. 1,(2022):e12704.https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12704.

Abrams, Jeanne E., and Hilary Smith.Compared To Polio And Smallpox, America's Covid-19 Vaccination Campaign Is Going Great. Edited by Jeanne E. Abrams and Hilary Allison Smith. Time. 2021https://time.com/6126442/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-polio-smallpox/.

Smith, Hilary A.“Good Food, Bad Bodies: Milk Culture And Lactose Intolerance In China.”In Moral Foods: The Construction Of Nutrition And Health In Modern Asia. edited by Angela Ki Che Leung, Melissa L. Caldwell, Robert Ji-Song Ku, and Christine R. Yano. 262-284Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press. 2019.

Smith, Hilary A.“Beyond Indulgence: Diet-Induced Illnesses In Chinese Medicine.”Historia Scientiarum 27, no. 2,(2018):233-253.https://www.academia.edu/36369289/Beyond_Indulgence_Diet_Induced_Illnesses_in_Chinese_Medicine.

Smith, Hilary A.“Skipping Breakfast To Save The Nation: A Different Kind Of Dietary Determinism In Early Twentieth-Century China.”Global Food History 4, no. 2,(2018):152-167.https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2018.1450002.

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