Program in the History of Medicine Faculty & Administration
The Program in the History of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai brings together a distinguished faculty of doctors, scholars, authors and experts. The program’s faculty combines broad expertise in epidemiology, ethics, history and, of course, many facets of medicine.
Primary Faculty
Gideon Manning, PhD, is a historian of medicine, science, and philosophy. He is the editor or co-editor of four books and more than two dozen articles and book chapters. Current research topics include the grammar of anatomical illustration, experiment in surgery, definitions of death, history of medical specialization, and Cartesian medicine.
Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, PhD, is an historian of medicine, specializing in the history of disease control, biomedical science and technology, and global health. She received her PhD in the history of medicine from Johns Hopkins University. She recently completed a book manuscript on the history of insecticide-treated nets and malaria control in Africa titled Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects (in press, Johns Hopkins University Press). She has also published two articles in Social History of Medicine, including a recent one related to her first book project. In her next project, she will investigate the history of yet-to-be successful vaccines (e.g., for HIV/AIDS).
Rena Selya, PhD, MLIS, is an historian and archivist of science and medicine. She has a PhD in the history of science from Harvard University and a master’s in library and information science from UCLA. Selya came to archival work after nearly 20 years as an historian of 20th-century American biomedicine, focusing on the history of genetics, molecular biology, cancer research and neuroscience. She taught the history of science and medicine as well as American history at Harvard University, UCLA and Santa Monica College. Her biography of Salvador Luria is available from the MIT Press.
Sari J. Siegel, PhD, is an historian of the Holocaust and the history of medicine. After receiving her PhD from the University of Southern California, she was the Hartman Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University's Fortunoff Video Archive. The recipient of numerous grants, Siegel has also held fellowships in residence in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, and Washington, D.C. She has presented her scholarship at academic workshops and conferences in seven countries. Her publications include articles in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Journal of Genocide Research. She is currently a member of the Lancet Commission on Medicine and the Holocaust and is adapting her dissertation on Jewish prisoner-physicians in Nazi camps into a book manuscript.
Affiliated Faculty
Virginia L. Bartlett, PhD, is the Assistant Director of the Center for Healthcare Ethics and Associate Professor in Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California. She serves as a clinical ethics consultant, provides ethics education across the medical center and community, serves on institutional, local, and national boards and task forces, and researches the practices and contexts of clinical ethics consultation. Her current scholarly projects include interdisciplinary ethics education, ethical challenges in caring for unrepresented patients, and responsibility in clinical ethics consultation practice.
Stuart G. Finder, PhD, whose graduate studies where in Philosophy, has spent his entire career working within the healthcare context – as a clinical ethics consultant, a teacher, and a researcher. In all these roles, Finder explores the complexity and implications of moral experiences as actualized in healthcare contexts. His book, Peer Review, Peer Education, and Modeling Practice in Clinical Ethics Consultation: The Zadeh Project, which he co-edited and wrote the central case scenario around which the book revolves (as well as co-authored the introductory and concluding chapters) is the first to examine issues of peer review for clinical ethics consultation.
Stephen A. Geller, MD, is a pathologist with special interest in liver diseases (hepatopathology), gastrointestinal pathology and the history of pathology. For 22 years he served as chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai. He has published more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters, three textbooks, a novel, and more. He received the Golden Apple teaching award at Cedars-Sinai six times and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Society of Pathologists. He now devotes his time to continuing studies in medical history and fiction writing, earning a master’s in writing in 2018.
Leo A. Gordon, MD, FACS, is an attending surgeon at Cedars-Sinai.
Andy Kondrat, PhD, serves as a clinical ethics consultant in the Center for Healthcare Ethics at Cedars-Sinai. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, the Director of the Program in the Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, and the Co-Director of Responsible Conduct of Research Training.
Frank Strauss, MD, received his BA from Columbia University and his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has been an attending physician at Cedars-Sinai since 1974, has served as clinical chief of the Department of Medicine (1995-1998) and as a member of the Medical Executive Committee (1995-2000). He retired from his nephrology and internal medicine practice in 2014 and is now on the emeritus staff. Having published on the topics of renal transplantation, peritoneal dialysis and the history of medicine, Strauss’ current research interests include the history of Bright’s disease, the dynamic character of 19th-century U.S. medicine with a focus on the development of medical education, as well as explorations of racism and ethnic bias, and long-term survival in patients with chronic kidney disease with dialysis therapies or kidney transplantation.
Visiting Faculty
Stephen N. Joffe, BSc, MBBCh, MD, FACS, FCS (SA), FRCS (Edinburgh), FRCS (Glasgow), FACG, is an Esteemed Quondam Professor of Surgery and Medicine at University of Cincinnati Medical Center, a position he has held since 1990. Previously from 1980 he was a full-time tenured Professor of Surgery and Medicine and Divisional Director of Gastro-Intestinal and Endocrine Surgery.
Stephen has held faculty appointments at the Universities of London, Glasgow, and holds fellowships of the American College of Surgeons and the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of Edinburgh and Glasgow and the South African College of Surgeons.
He is a member or fellow, past and current, of 80 societies, has published over 190 articles in peer-reviewed and scientific journals and 40 chapters for books, including being author and editor of nine books on lasers and their application to medicine and surgery, and two books on the anatomist, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and is a book collector of early anatomists.
He was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of LCA-Vision. Nasdaq: (LCAV). He was also the founder of the company’s corporate predecessor, Laser Centers of America, Inc. and served as its Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer.
Monique Kornell, PhD, is an art historian and has published on the history of anatomical illustration and the study of anatomy by artists. She has a doctorate in combined historical studies from the Warburg Institute and a master’s in the history of art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, both University of London. She was the curator of the exhibition “Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy” (Feb. 22-July 10, 2022) at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (which was accompanied by a catalog).
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