Brad Fidler

Thinner, Happier, and Less Reactive

2012-03-19T08:42:00.003-07:00

I'm a fan of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society's Points Blog, so I am happy to be guest blogging four posts for them over the next month. My first post is on Qnexa, a recently approved weight loss pill, which is really just a repackaged mood stabilizer. Read on.

[talk] The Patient-Profit Relationship In U.S. Pharmaceutical Markets

2012-02-13T08:19:00.000-08:00

This talk is in a few hours, but I thought I would post it anyways, thereby alerting you to the great colloquia and conferences put on by the UCLA Department of History.

(Bunche 5288, from February 13, 2012 04:00 PM)

[course] Introduction to Internet History: 1960 to the Present

2012-01-23T15:07:00.000-08:00

I am developing a course entitled "Introduction to Internet History: 1960 to the Present," which I will teach this summer at the UCLA Department of History.

[talk] Mental Health and Economic History: Changes in Antipsychotic Drug Markets in the US, c. 1960-2000

2011-12-13T18:48:00.000-08:00

From the good people at the Research Forum in Medical History and the Medical Humanities:

"12:30 pm, Friday, January 20, 2011
Rare Book Room, History and Special Collections
9th level, Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library

Brad Fidler, PhD, 2011, UCLA Department of History

Mental Health and Economic History: Changes in Antipsychotic Drug Markets in the US, c. 1960-2000

A new generation of antipsychotic medications introduced in the 1980s and 1990s is distinguished less by health outcomes than the economics of American (and global) pharmaceuticals in the late twentieth century. In this talk, Dr. Fidler looks to these new drugs as a way to understand the significance and historical context of the changing structure and function of psychiatric drug marketing in the US."

You need to RSVP to other people at this email address.

Defend the patriarchy!

You Should Come To This Party

2011-10-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

The Old, New, and Remembered on BBC Outriders

2011-06-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure of speaking with Jamillah Knowles about Internet history and 3420 Boelter Hall on her BBC show Outriders the other day.

Here's a link to the show page and the podcast mp3.

A History of Suffering in the People's Republic of China

2011-03-09T11:02:00.000-08:00

Update: due to time constraints I won't be here -- but be sure to check out the conference if you are interested in how the body and mind have been mapped, drugged, and imagined over the last few centuries.

I will be speaking this September 2011 at the Body and the Mind in the History of Medicine and Health conference in Utrecht, the Netherlands, put on by the The European Association for the History of Medicine and Health.

Part of my discussion how emerging mental health problems in China are being used as examples in the west to further one or another political agendas -- and what can actually be learned from the Chinese experience.

New Techniques of Pharmaceutical Knowledge and the Gendered Clinical Encounter

2011-03-06T00:54:00.001-08:00

Click to enlarge

This June 2011 I will speak at Humboldt University in Berlin, about the ways that pharmaceutical firms deal with gender in their marketing strategies for psychiatric medications. The conference is Contested Truths: Re-Shaping and Positioning Politics of Knowledge.

Aims of the conference:

Read more »

Successful PhD Letter of Intent (Chinese History)

2010-09-08T20:23:00.000-07:00

Following Quinn Dupont’s lead, I am posting a successful Letter of Intent. It was for the UCLA Department of History’s PhD program, in 2004.

My doctoral research and dissertation will elaborate an analysis of rural credit networks in China’s Yangzi delta region, c. 1506-1750. [1] These networks shaped the possibilities for industrialization and wealth accumulation, and yet their significance for economic development and everyday peasant life remains underappreciated. Insofar as rural credit is acknowledged as an important aspect of the period, it is usually thought to have operated like credit networks in early modern England, promoting social trust, investment and liquidity. In China, my research indicates that rural credit was instead a facet of peasant survival strategies, curtailing the economic activities now associated with ‘modern’ economic development. Since analyses of Chinese rural credit networks are often accompanied by contrasts with Western Europe, I integrate an explicit comparison with England in order to appreciate the delta’s specificities. [2]