Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Carla Bittel
Loyola Marymount University
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Performing Expertise: Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Female Physiology in Late Nineteenth-Century America
This talk examines the life and work of Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906), physician and activist from New York, as a starting point for analyzing the “sexual science” of women physicians in the late nineteenth century. Practicing for over thirty years, Jacobi devoted much of her career to researching women’s health issues. At a time when several medical men argued for female difference and inferiority, she intervened, employing experimental methods and diagnostic technologies to make her own claims about gender equality and sex similarities. In the process, Jacobi performed expertise, orchestrating investigations and producing knowledge to gain legitimacy as a woman of science in medicine. In an effort to normalize female biology through positivist means, her work shows how the knowledge produced by women reflected their own gender politics and identities as practitioners. Ultimately, her story reveals the contested nature of women’s health and the politics embedded in all sides of the debate over sex differences.
4:00PM
Monday, March 10, 2008
140 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: ohst@berkeley.edu
