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Academic Year 2000/2001


History of Women, Race, and Health
WMST 270 FA

Crosslistings:
HIST 295
SISP 270

This course introduces students to the history of women and medicine from the 18th century to the present, centering on the United States but exploring recent scholarship on other times and places. We will explore how women from diverse social classes, races and ethnicities, and national origins functioned as health-care providers--as domestic healers, nurses, physicians, and midwives. We also will examine the history of women as patients: How did women experience health and illness in the past? What expectations and norms shaped that experience? We will discuss how medical knowledge about women has changed, how ideas about gender have been constructed by the medical professions, and the processes by which race, class, and gender have become salient f or making social distinctions between different groups of women in their social roles as providers and/or patients. Among the topics we will consider include medical views of women's bodies, maternal and child welfare policies, the racial politics of birt h control and reproduction policies, the labor movement in nursing and the experiences of immigrant and poor women in seeking access to medical care in Europe and the United States, the history of black female physicians in the U.S., and the class, gender and racial politics of American medical professionalization and public health. The format of the course is lecture and discussion.

MAJOR READINGS

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A MIDWIFE'S TALE
Darlene Clark Hine, ed., BLACK WOMEN IN THE NURSING PROFESSION: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
Judith W. Leavitt, ed., WOMEN AND HEALTH IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL READINGS
Zora Neale Hurston, THE SANCTIFIED CHURCH
Emily Martin, THE WOMAN IN THE BODY
Rina Apple, ed. WOMEN, HEALTH AND MEDICINE IN AMERICA
Judith Leavitt, TYPHOID MARY
Gertrude Fraser, AFRICAN AMERICAN MIDWIFERY IN THE SOUTH
Bayne-Smith, RACE, GENDER, AND HEALTH
McClain, WOMEN AS HEALERS: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Midterm, two written assignments, a journal and final paper.

Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-26-2001


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