Martha Yoder

Martha Yoder is a senior lecturer with Commonwealth Honors College. She is a historian who has taught interdisciplinary courses in Commonwealth Honors College for more than 12 years.

She received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts/Five College graduate program in history in 2004. Her dissertation,"Violation and Immunity: The Languages of Politics and Health in Prerevolutionary Massachusetts," explores the relationship among political rhetoric, economic and health conditions, and conceptions of health and disease in the decades leading up to the American Revolution.

She continues her research in the fields of 18th-century medical history and political economy, most recently in a paper examining health caretaking as a basis for women's political activism during the Revolution. She is currently teaching The American Family, an interdisciplinary and U.S.-diversity honors seminar with an optional service-learning colloquium; Health and Sickness in America: Historical and Crosscultural Perspectives; and a year-long interdisciplinary thesis course.