She is the author of Doctored: The Medicine of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), which explores the relationship between studio portrait photography, medical discourse, and social identity. Dr. Sheehan is currently writing a book that examines ideas about race in early photographic humor, a selection of which has been published in the journal Photography & Culture. For this project she has recently received fellowship support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.