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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.
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
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
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459