Udodiri Okwandu

• Priority Area: Race, Racism, and Inequality
• Disciplines: History of Science; Social and Cultural History of U.S. Medicine; Critical Studies of Race and Gender; Reproductive Justice; Medical Humanities
• Mentors: Dr. Kyla Schuller and Dr. Joanna Schoen
• Mentors' Disciplines: Gender studies, race theory, American literature, science studies (Dr. Kyla Schuller) | History of women and medicine, history of reproductive rights, history of sexuality (Dr. Johanna Schoen)
• School: School of Arts and Sciences 
• Department: Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Dr. Udodiri R. Okwandu is a Nigerian-American historian of science and medicine whose scholarship and teaching contextualize profound racial, gender, and class inequities within the U.S. healthcare landscape. She earned her PhD and MA in the HIstory of Science at Harvard University, where she was a Presidential Scholar. Dr. Okwandu is particularly interested in examining the historical contexts of psychiatric and reproductive health injustices and sociocultural understandings of health and disease. As a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Okwandu will be working on converting her dissertation -- “Madness and Motherhood in Black and White: Racial Logics in Medical Responses to Maternal Mental Illness and Deviance, 1890 – 1970" -- into a manuscript. It investigates how racial science and racialized constructions of motherhood informed the evolving classification, diagnosis, and treatment of maternal mental illnesses (i.e., mental disorders associated with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period) in the United States from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Recognizing that concepts of motherhood, insanity, and deviance are deeply embedded in larger racial discourses, her project asks how medical constructions of maternal mental illness have been both informed by and (re)produced the American sociocultural ideal of a mother who is white, middle-class, and domestic. In doing so, it illustrates how racialized diagnostic and therapeutic practices associated with maternal mental illness protected hegemonic constructions of white womanhood by reinforcing the conflation between “whiteness” and “good mothering” and “blackness” and “pathological mothering.” It also illuminates how historical constructs of maternal mental illness continue to pose barriers for non-white and low-income mothers -- especially Black women -- within medical, legal, and social systems today. As an award-winning educator, she is eager to promote inclusive and innovative teaching methods that foster a sense of belonging and empower students of all backgrounds to succeed. She is eager to implement these values in the Spring of 2025, when she will teach "Gender, Race, and Science" with the Department of Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies. At Rutgers more broadly, she is eager to foster connections at the Center for Historical Analysis, Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ), and the Institute for Research on Women. Ultimately, she is committed to contributing to the University's efforts to promote a diverse and inclusive environment that ensures academic excellence.