photo by Kat Ambrose

I am a historian of the body and filmmaker focusing on medicine and health in global East Asia. My forthcoming book, Body Maps: Improvising Meridians and Nerves in Global Chinese Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press) explores a visual history of mapping meridians onto peripheral nerves from the early modern period to the twentieth century. I have also published on the history of the emotions, a social analysis of barefoot doctors, and feminist intellectual history of Chinese medicine, which I intend on turning into a book. I am also developing a transnational history of numbness, which situates numbness, or ma 麻, in categories of flavor and food before tracking its transformation into a pathological side effect. 

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the East Asian Studies Program and Department of History of Science and Technology. I received my Ph.D. in History, Anthropology, and Science Technology and Society Studies from MIT and served as a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University before joining the medical humanities program and department of history faculty at Rice University. My film and media work has led to collaborations with medical practitioners in Shanghai, Mumbai, São Paulo, New York, Boston, Houston, and Baltimore.

I direct the Medicine Race Democracy Lab and serve as editor of the eikon gallery for positionspolitics.org. I also produce a number of podcasts and exhibitions including Blue Beryl with Pierce Salguero, Metaphors of the Mind with Alex Wragge-Morley, the metastasis podcast, and Point Break.

Twitter @LanAngelaLi
(they/she)