Levity Smith

Levity studies how people make moral meaning of bodily conditions. His data sources include historical records belonging to patients, administrative boards, and municipalities; health law and legislative journals; and patient interviews.

His dissertation (in its early stages) considers how 20th century eugenicist doctors, nurses, lawyers, social workers, and administrators negotiated morality through programs to sterilize "moral degenerates and sexual perverts."

His two ongoing collaborative projects concern spinal cord injury and racialized water governance. His interests broadly include morality, embodiment, materiality, inequalities, governmentality, science and technology studies, and public health.