Noon
brown bag event is free and open to the public
OXFORD,Miss. – Links between enslaved women and poor Irish immigrant women and
the advancement of American gynecology will be discussed by Deirdre
Cooper Owens, University of Mississippi assistant professor of history,
Wednesday (Sept. 23) in a campus program.
Part of
the Southern Studies Brown Bag Lunch & Lecture series in the Center
for the Study of Southern Culture, the free, public event is set for noon
in the Barnard Observatory lecture hall.
“I’ll
be discussing my comparative race study on enslaved women and poor Irish
immigrant women who lived during the antebellum era in the South and in
the North,” Cooper Owens said. “We’ll glimpse into the lives of
these women whose bodies were used to help pioneer modern
gynecology.”
Physicians
who were intent on curing female disorders relied heavily on these two
groups of women because of myriad gynecological illnesses they developed,
according to Cooper Owens. The physical vulnerabilities of these women,
coupled with their low status, allowed doctors more access to their
bodies than to those of middle-class white women, she said.
Despite
their physical weaknesses, these bonded and immigrant women were viewed
by doctors as “super-bodies,” or superior specimens for
surgical and experimental work, Cooper Owens said. Ultimately, the
institutions of slavery and immigration had deep linkages to the dynamic
growth and advancement of American modern gynecology during the 19th
century, she said.
Cooper
Owens earned a doctorate in history from UCLA. Before joining the UM
faculty in August 2008, she was a 2008-09 Carter G. Woodson Postdoctoral
Fellow at the University of Virginia. She was recently awarded the Mary
Wollstonecraft Dissertation Award. The award honors the best dissertation
that uses historical methods to study women and gender. This semester,
she is teaching a graduate seminar on the history of slavery.
The
Southern Studies Brown Bag Lunch & Lecture takes place at noon each
Wednesday during the fall and spring semesters. For more information,
including upcoming events in the series, visit
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/
assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-5993.