Stephen Pemberton, Ph.D., is Chair of the NJIT Federated Department of History

Dr. Pemberton is a historian of medicine, disease, and health with expertise in United States history and the history and sociology of science. His research and teaching is also informed by his training in philosophy and his engagements with medical humanities scholarship and health policy debates.

He is author of The Bleeding Disease: Hemophilia and the Unintended Consequences of Medical Progress (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) and co-author of The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis and Sickle Cell Disease (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

His current research project is ‘Bleeding Disorder: What Hemophilia Experiences Reveal about Biocapitalism and Health Advocacy.’

Ph.D. ; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ; History ; 2001

M.A. ; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ; History ; 1997

M.A. ; University of Memphis ; Philosophy ; 1992

B.A. ; Trinity University ; Philosophy ; 1990

2022 CSLA Undergraduate Teaching Award, College of Science and Liberal Arts

2020 NJIT Master Teacher and Fellow of the Institute for Teaching Excellence, New Jersey Institute of Technology

2020 An Instructor of the Year, Albert Dorman Honors College Graduating Class

2020 CSLA Excellence in Service Award, College of Science and Liberal Arts

2019 Most Inspirational Teacher, Albert Dorman Honors College Graduating Class

2014 CSLA Excellence in Service Award, College of Science and Liberal Arts

2013 Outstanding Honors Faculty, Albert Dorman Honors College Graduating Class

2007 Best Book in the History of Science, Association of American Publishers, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division

Email for Appointment

https://stephenpemberton.academia.edu

HIST 701B - MASTER'S THESIS

HSS 404 - HISTORY SEMINAR: HEALTH, JUSTICE, AND CAPITALISM - HONORS

HIST 311 - HISTORY CO-OP II

HIST 727 - INDEPENDENT STUDY

HIST 402 - INDEPENDENT STUDY - HONORS

HIST 702 - MASTER'S ESSAY

HIST 401 - INDEPENDENT STUDY

HIST 725 - INDEPENDENT STUDY

HIST 310 - HISTORY CO-OP I

HIST 726 - INDEPENDENT STUDY

HIST 402 - INDEPENDENT STUDY

HIST 701C - MASTER'S THESIS

History of medicine

History of public health

History of biomedical sciences and technology

History of health law and policy

United States history

Dr. Pemberton is a historian of medicine, disease and health with expertise in United States history and the history and sociology of science. His research and writing is also informed by his training in philosophy and his engagements with medical humanities scholarship and health policy debates.

Bleeding Disorder: What Hemophilia Experiences Reveal about Biocapitalism and Health Advocacy
This book of scholarly essays situates historical and contemporary efforts to treat hemophilia and other bleeding disorders as a lens for interpreting biocapitalism and health advocacy; the book asks readers to consider what the pursuit of healing and justice entails for democratic societies committed to using biocapital to promote medical and social progress.

The Case for Irony in Medicine
This research project explores how and why a therapeutic concept of irony can serve as a standpoint for judging the vexed character of “high tech” medicine and healthcare today. Fully understood, a therapeutic concept of irony provides physicians and other caregivers with a means for overcoming some of the conceptual as well as practical difficulties that have impeded their best efforts to care for their patients as well as themselves.

Stephen G. Pemberton. 2019. “Bad Blood and Unsettled Law: Are Healing and Justice Even Possible When Biocapitalism Prevails?.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine , vol. 62 , no. 3 , pp. 576-590.

Stephen G. Pemberton. 2014. “The Fix Is In.” Nature , vol. 515 , no. 7528 , pp. S165.

“Gene Therapy's Haemophlia Promise Is Tempered by Memories of Past Tragedies [Reprint of "The Fix is In" from Nature]”
Scientific American, January (1st Quarter/Winter), 2015.

Stephen G. Pemberton. “The Curious Case of the ‘Professional Hemophiliac’: Medicine, Disability and the Contested Value of Normality in the United States, 1940-2010.” In Susan Burch and Michael Rembis, eds., pp. 237-57. Disability Histories, 2014.

Stephen G. Pemberton. “‘The Most Hereditary of All Diseases’: Hemophilia and the Utility of Genetics for Hematology, 1930-1970.” In Bernd Gausemeier, Staffan Müller-Wille, and Edmund Ramsden, eds., pp. 165-178. Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century , 2013.

Stephen G. Pemberton. “Canine Technologies, Model Patients: The Historical Production of Hemophiliac Dogs in American Biomedicine.” In Susan Schrepfer and Philip Scranton, eds., pp. 191-213. Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History , 2004.

Stephen G. Pemberton. “The Bleeding Disease: Hemophilia and the Unintended Consequences of Medical Progress.” 400 pp. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Keith Wailoo, Stephen G. Pemberton. “The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease.” Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.