By Yixue Yang and Sharrona Pearl
This seminar is part of the centre for History in Public Health seminar series: Historical perspectives on ethics, morals, and values in public health. It examines the cultural and political contexts shaping historical public health interventions.
Yang explores the Protecting Students’ Eyesight Campaign in later Mao-era People’s Republic of China -1960-1976), highlighting how health guidelines transformed students’ personal habits and how the instrumentalization of youth was coated in the rhetoric of protection. Pearl discusses the history of masking and its tensions in the US, from the 19th century to Covid, emphasising the dynamics around concealing and revealing, protecting and dividing. Using a broad historical lens, she explores the history of masking, exploring various sites and domains of practice to show its consistent use as a means of protection and division.
Read more and watch the seminar here.
Decolonising Global Health Archive 