Medical Bondage and the Birth of American Gynecology
When: Thu., March 28, 4-6 p.m. 2019
Carnegie Mellon University's 13th Annual Margaret Morrison Distinguished Lecture in Women’s History Presents: Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens, Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY. In her prize-winning book, "Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology," Cooper Owens explores how experimental surgeries on enslaved and working-poor women created the specialty of American gynecology. She shows how these experiments also shaped nineteenth-century Americans' understanding of race. Merging women’s medical and social histories, Cooper Owens pivots away from a near exclusive focus on white men to look instead at Black and Irish women's lives, offering a new origins story.