Steven Palmer

Steven Palmer was born in Montreal and grew up in different areas of the city, in Shawinigan and in St. John's.  He completed a BA at UBC and grad work in Latin American History at Columbia University, with research on 19th-century nationalism. He then focused on the social history of medicine and public health in modern Central America, Cuba and Brazil, as well as the development of a global health system by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Steven always worked in creative media.  Between 1994 and 1999, he wrote and performed for The Great Eastern, a comedy on the CBC Radio network.  A member of the History Department here since 2001, from 2006-2016, he was Canada Research Chair in History of International Health.  

He wrote The Metropolitan, a stage play based on the late 1940s "sex scandal" involving the mayor of Windsor and hospital nurses, which was given a staged reading by the School of Dramatic Arts. More recently he made a feature-length documentary film, Ghost Artist (2018, 66 minutes), that grew out of his discovery of a lost art movie from the Health Pavilion at Expo 67.

Current Projects

Promoting his feature-length documentary film, Ghost Artist (2018), whose point of departure is an art movie about medicine that made 20,000 faint at Expo 67.

Ghost Artist trailer: https://vimeo.com/301863009/08839560b7

Researching and reviving the 1967 film in question, Miracles in Modern Medicine, which was shown recently at the British Film Institute - Southbank and will be screened at New York's Anthology Film Archives in May 2019.

Link to Walrus article on Miracles in Modern Medicine: https://thewalrus.ca/the-movie-that-shocked-canada/

Co-editing a volume with Craig Moyes (King's College, London), Expo 67 and Its World: Staging Nationalism in the Crucible of Globalization for McGill-Queen's Press.

Link to collaborator Craig Moyes: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/person.aspx?id=6aeaf48d-9788-4f6d-bbe9-bc34bd507216

Reconstructing and re-producing for contemporary audiences Robert Cordier's Miracles in Modern Medicine show, a combined film-theatre piece staged in the Meditheatre at Expo 67's Health Pavilion.


Department: History
Areas of expertise: History, Latin America, Central America, Costa Rica, Cuba, International Health, History of Medicine, Rockefeller Foundation, Diphtheria in Ontario
Office: Room 1167 Chrysler Hall North
Phone: +1 519 253 3000 x2329
E-mail: spalmer@uwindsor.ca