Instructor

About

  • Find Me On:

    linkedin
  • Website:

    http://www.davidkorostyshevsky.com
  • Role:

    Faculty
  • Position:

    • Instructor
  • Concentration:

    • History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
    • Legal History
    • Alcohol, Drugs, and Addiction
  • Department:

    • History
  • Education:

    • PhD—History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota
    • MA—History, University of New Mexico

Biography

I am an interdisciplinary historian interested in answering questions at the intersection of medicine and law. My first book, provisionally titled The Reign of King Alcohol: Medicine, Law, and the Dilemma of Compulsion, uncovers the unexpected nineteenth-century origins of a persistently important modern category, “the addict,” and tensions between treating or punishing him by studying the medico-legal construction of the “habitual drunkard” in the United States during the long nineteenth century. A transnational array of scientists, doctors, life insurers, and the public participated in a dynamic engagement with temperance reformers, jurists, and legislators who built legal structures to govern habitual drunkards before the medicalization of addiction or Prohibition. Legal outcomes limiting the habitual drunkard’s rights governed him across various layers of law, including adult guardianship, divorce, and the exclusion from life insurance. Non-criminal consequences like losing one’s property through guardianship represent an exercise of biopower that punished drinkers while incentivizing non-drinkers to remain sober. Efforts to operationalize habitual drunkenness into a serviceable legal category also created tension between the moral and the medical in the courtroom. Having chosen to drink in the first place, the habitual drunkard was responsible even if his compulsions resulted from a diseased physiology compromised by alcohol. The early American struggle to define and detect compulsive drinkers reveals an important origin point for the disciplinary governance of ostensibly medical conditions like addiction.

My teaching is centered on making historical knowledge accessible and relevant to students, scholars, and the public. I harness the power of writing, self-reflection, and collaborative learning to move beyond the memorization of names, events, and dates. Instead, I show that history is an active study and interpretation of historical documents and scholarship. I am deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom by prioritizing underrepresented voices on the syllabus and assigning low-stakes and self-reflective writing so students can work with challenging new ideas without the fear of “getting it wrong.” I want students to leave my classroom with a greater appreciation for the complexity of historical analysis, sensitivity to silences and omissions in historical knowledge, and the ability to critically evaluate the reliability and significance of information. Ultimately, I strive to make historical knowledge accessible and relevant so that students become well-rounded, socially conscious citizens.

Courses Taught:

HIST 150 United States to 1876
HIST 151 United States Since 1876
HIST 201 Pandemics in U.S. History
HIST 341 Empire, Race, Revolution: America, 1700-1815
HIST 344 Antebellum America
HIST 345 Civil War Era

Publications

"An Artificial Appetite: The Nineteenth-Century Struggle to Define Habitual Drunkenness," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, [Forthcoming, Fall 2024].

“Corrupting the body and mind: distilled spirits, drunkenness, and disease in early-modern England and the British Atlantic world,” in Alcohol, psychiatry and society: Comparative and transnational perspectives, c. 1700-1990s, Waltraud Ernst and Thomas Müller, eds. (Manchester University Press, 2022), 36-65. LINK

“Valuing Process over Product: Writing to Learn in the Undergraduate History Classroom,” Teaching History: A Journal of Methods vol. 46, issue 1 (2021): 10-22 [co-authored with Genesea M. Carter]. LINK

“Beyond Cardiac Surgery: Owen H. Wangensteen and the University of Minnesota’s Contributions to Mid-Century Surgical Science,” Minnesota Medicine (January/February, 2018): 22-25. LINK