Wendy Kline

Biography

Wendy Kline is an American historian of medicine specializing in the cultural and political histories of women’s reproductive health and the history of the criminal mind. She is the author of four books: Building a Better Race (UC Press), Bodies of Knowledge (Chicago), Coming Home (Oxford), and Exposed: The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam (Polity). Her current project, Picking the Brain to Map the Mind, examines the early twentieth-century origins of psychiatric expert testimony through brain morphology. In 2014 Kline joined Purdue University as the Dema G. Seelye Chair in the History of Medicine, where she directs the Medical Humanities Certificate Program. Her research has been supported by the Huntington Library, British Academy, and Fulbright fellowships, and featured in PBS’s American Experience and Netflix’s Sex, Explained. Kline is also a SCUBA diver and violinist with the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra.