University of North Texas 
Rachel Moran
Associate Professor
Associate Professor
WH 248
- Modern U.S. History, Women’s and Gender History, History of Medicine
(She/Her/Hers)
I am a historian of health, medicine, and modern politics in a U.S. context. I am especially interested in ways in which political culture and institutions have shaped Americans' relationships with health and wellness, in arenas including nutrition and fitness, psychiatry, and women's health. My new book is Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America. It explores women’s activism, medical/grassroots alliances, and the politics of women’s health in the 20th and 21st century US. This project was supported by an NSF Scholars award.
At UNT, I teach courses in modern politics, the history of medicine, the history of the body, and women's history. I am also affiliated with UNT's Women and Gender Studies Program.
Selected Publications:
Book:
Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America. University of Chicago Press, 2024. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo235431923.html
Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique. University of Pennsylvania Press, Politics & Culture in Modern America series, 2018.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15804.html
Book Chapters and Articles:
Spitting on My Sources: Depression, DNA, and the Ambivalent Historian,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 55 (Fall 2022): 449-458. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22219
“A Women’s Health Issue?: Framing Post-Abortion Syndrome in the 1980s,” Gender and History 33 (October 2021): 790-804. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12554
“Gender, Sexuality, and the State,” co-authored with Jennifer Mittelstadt, in Companion to American Women’s History, 2nd ed., Ed. Nancy A. Hewitt and Anne Valk, Wiley Blackwell Press, 2021, 279-298.
"Fears of a Nanny State: Centering Gender and Family in the Political History of Regulation," in Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the 20th Century, Ed. Brent Cebul, Lily Geismer, and Mason Williams, University of Chicago Press, 2019.
https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo31043679.html
"Weighing in about Weight: Advisory Power in the Bureau of Home Economics," in Remaking
Home Economics: Resourcefulness and Innovation in Changing Times, Ed. Sharon Y. Nikols
and Gwen Kay, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2015.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17574wh
"Consuming Relief: Food Stamps and the New Welfare of the New Deal," Journal of American
History 76, (March 2011): 1001-1022.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41508912
Select Awards:
- National Science Foundation Scholars Award; Science, Technology and Society Program, Award 1849533, 2019-2020
- Fellowship in the History of American Obstetrics and Gynecology, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2017
- Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 2011-2012