Harold Braswell, Ph.D., M.S.W., LCSW
Graduate Program Coordinator; Bicentennial Fellow; associate professor
Department of Health Care Ethics
Education
- M.S.W., Saint Louis University, 2022
- Ph.D. Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts, 2014 Emory University, Atlanta, Ga.
- Certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
- B.A., with honors, Spanish and Portuguese, 2003 Columbia University, New York City, N.Y.
Research Interests
- Disability studies, end-of-life care, psychoanalysis, Holocaust and genocide studies, Deaf Studies
- Currently researching impact of Oralism on the US deaf community
Professional Experience
Grant
- Cornerstone Learning for Living” Implementation Grant ($250,000), Teagle Foundation, 2023-5
Publications and Media Placements
Book
- Braswell, Harold. The Crisis of US Hospice Care. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019
- Fox, Brandy & Braswell, Harold (2024). In Defense of “Physician-Assisted Suicide”: Toward (and Back to) a Transparent, Destigmatizing Debate. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 1-12.
- Schütz, Mathias, and Harold Braswell. “Ethicizing history. Bioethical representations
of Nazi medicine.” Bioethics (April 2023).
- Braswell, Harold. “Take Pity: What Disability Rights Can Learn from Religious Charity.”
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, special issue on disability and theology 47.5
(October 2022): 636-652.
- Dugdale, L.S. and Harold Braswell. “Instacash: the Ethics of Leveraging Medical Student
Status on Social Media.” Academic Medicine, (April 2021): 507-11.
- Braswell, Harold. “US Hospice Structure and its Implications for the ‘Right to Die’
Debate: an Interdisciplinary Study of the ‘Feeling of Being a Burden to Others.’”
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, (September 2019): 1-10.
- Braswell, Harold. “Putting the Right to Die in its Place: Disability Rights and Physician-Assisted
Suicide in the Context of US End-of-Life Care.” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,
special issue “Accommodation, Recognition, Justice: Legal Treatment of Persons with
Disabilities,” 72 (2018): 75-99.
- Braswell, Harold. ”From Disability Rights to the Rights of the Dying (and back again)” Laws, special issue ”Health Care Law and the Rights of Individuals with Disabilities,” 6.4 (2017).
- Braswell, Harold. “My Two Moms: Disability, Queer Kinship, and the Maternal Subject.”
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, special issue “New Conversations in Feminist
Disability Studies,” 30.1 (winter 2015): 234-250.
- Braswell, Harold, and Howard I. Kushner. “Suicide, Social Integration, and Masculinity
in the U.S. Military.” Social Science & Medicine, 74.4 (2012): 530-36.
- Braswell, Harold. “Neuropsychoanalytic Bioethics.” American Journal of Bioethics
Neuroscience, 3.3 (2012): 3-6.
- Braswell, Harold. “Can there be a Disability Studies Theory of ‘End-of-Life Autonomy?’”
Disability Studies Quarterly, 31.4 (2011).
- Braswell, Harold. “In Search of a Wide-Angle Lens.” Hastings Center Report, 41.3 (May-June 2011): 19-21.
- Braswell, Harold. “Taking Representation Seriously: Rethinking Bioethics through Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.” Journal of Medical Humanities, 32. 2 (2011): 77-87.
- Braswell, Harold. “Between “Aid in Dying” and “Assisted Suicide”: Disability Bioethics and the Right to Die,” Disability Bioethics Reader, London: Routledge, 2022.
- Braswell, Harold. “Euthanasia.” Keywords in Disability, New York: NYU Press, 2014.
- Braswell, Harold. “Teaching Psychoanalysis as a Manual for Living.” Psyche on Campus,
July 25, 2024.
https://web.sas.upenn.edu/psycheoncampus/2024/07/25/teaching-psychoanalysis-as-a-manual-for-living/ - Braswell, Harold and Zachary Berger. “Bioethicists Call for Ceasefire in Gaza.” Bioethics
Today, November 13, 2023.
https://bioethicstoday.org/blog/bioethicists-call-for-ceasefire-in-gaza/ - Braswell, Harold. “Denying Nothingness: The Delusion of the Nursing Home.” Parapraxis,
Issue 1, December 2022.
https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/denying-nothingness - Braswell, Harold. “Canada is Plunging Toward a Human Rights Disaster for Disabled
People.” Washington Post, February 19, 2021.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/canada-is-heading-toward-a-human-rights-disaster-for-disabled-people/2021/02/19/01cbfca4-7232-11eb-85fa-e0ccb3660358_story.html - Braswell, Harold. “Coming to Jesus,” Tablet Magazine, January 22, 2020. https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/297407/coming-to-jesus
- “Love and Other Disabilities,” Tablet Magazine, June 23, 2019. https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/286923/love-and-other-disabilities
- “Why do police keep seeing a person’s disability as a provocation?” Washington Post, August 25, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/08/25/people-with-mental-disabilities-get-the-worst-and-least-recognized-treatment-from-police/
Honors and Awards
- Semi-Finalist, Lee Jaffe Candidates Council Paper Prize, American Psychoanalytic Association, 2025
- K. Lynne Moritz, MD, Leadership Award, Saint Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, 2025
- Maurice Burke Paper Prize, Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, 2024
- Edith Sabshin Teaching Award, American Psychoanalytic Association, 2024
- Ignite Instructor of the Year, 2023
- Donald G. Brennan Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (College of Arts and Science), 2023
- Beaumont Scholarship Research Award (for project “Mapping the Relationship between Hospice and Anti-Black Housing Discrimination in Saint Louis, Missouri”), 2022
- Faculty Excellence Award for Excellence in Diversity and Social Justice (Student Government Association), 2021
- SLU Scholarly Works Award (for the book The Crisis of US Hospice Care)
- Emerald Literati Award for Excellence (for the article “Putting the ‘Right to Die’ in its Place: Disability Rights and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the Context of US End-of-Life Care”) 2019
- Bicentennial Fellowship, Saint Louis University, 2017
- Graduate Student Essay Prize, University of Chicago Program in Medicine and Religion, 2013
- Irving K. Zola Prize for Emerging Scholars in Disability Studies, Society for Disability Studies, 2011
- Hastings Center Report Young Scholar Essay Contest, Hastings Center, 2010