Ijeoma Kola

Assistant Professor
History

Research Interests

History of 20th century race and medicine, Black health social movements, Black medical knowledge-making, race and environmental history.

Related Courses Taught

Race and Racism in Science, Medicine, and Technology; Medical Racism: Past and Present (USEM)

Biography

Ijeoma Kola is a medical historian specializing in the intersection of race and medicine during the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research focuses on the medical and social construction of disease in Black bodies and health social movements within Black communities.

She is currently working on a manuscript titled I Can’t Breathe: Racism and the History of Asthma in Black America, which is an intellectual and cultural history of race and asthma in the United States from the late 1800s to the early 2000s. The manuscript explores how medical, public health, and popular narratives have associated asthma with Black racial identity and argues that scientific racism, medical racism, and environmental racism have shaped the perception and experience of asthma, contributing to the racial disparity in asthma prevalence today.