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Academic Year 2004/2005

History of Women, Race, and Health
WMST 270 SP
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 healthcare 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 for 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 birth 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

Margaret Llewelyn Davies, MATERNITY: LETTERS FROM WORKING WOMEN Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A MIDWIFE'S TALE Darlene Clark Hine, ed., BLACK WOMEN IN THE NURSING PROFESSION: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY Regina Morantz-Sanchez, SYMPATHY AND SCIENCE Judith W. Leavitt, ed., WOMEN AND HEALTH IN AMERICA: HISTORICAL READINGS Zora Neale Hurston, THE SANCTIFIED CHURCH Emily Martin, THE WOMAN IN THE BODY

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

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

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-21-2005

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