Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, English

My dissertation offers a complete prospectus of medicine for women and for sexual and reproductive health that survives in manuscripts produced in England, c. 850-1100 CE. I demonstrate that the understudied manuscripts belonging to a medical tradition called the Herbarium complex were in fact better suited to the needs of child-bearing communities than either the earlier medical books (e.g., the tenth-century Bald's Leechbook) or the new galenic medical texts arriving in England in the late eleventh century. Of all surviving medical books of the period, only the Herbarium complex was woman-oriented and treatment-oriented, as opposed to the infant- and knowledge-oriented medicine found in competing medical traditions. I also show that the Herbarium complex was the only medical book that was continuously used to treat patients from c. 950-1300; all other contemporary medical books were quickly displaced by the influx of new Arabic medicine c. 1070. Further, this research reveals which communities used which medical books: with its high proportion of medicine for conception and contraception, the Herbarium was uniquely suited to treat sexually active communities of lay women, where other medical books were reserved for celibate communities of monks and nuns. Thus, this dissertation establishes for the first time that the Herbarium complex should be accorded a central position in our understanding of early and high medieval English medicine in general, and the treatment of woman patients in particular.

Committee: Leslie Lockett (Committee Chair); Christopher A. Jones (Committee Member); Brian D. Joseph (Committee Member); Eric J. Johnson (Committee Member) Subjects: Ancient Languages; European Studies; Literacy; Medicine; Medieval History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2024, History

This thesis argues for an interdisciplinary examination of the origins and subsequent appearance of the Wassermann blood test, the first test developed for detecting syphilis, in eugenics initiatives and medicolegal mandates. When this seemingly impartial medical tool intersected with preexisting social and cultural biases regarding syphilis its story became one of blood purity initiatives for the preservation and proliferation of white normativity. Reframing the Wassermann as more than a passive medical tool highlights how ostensibly impartial medical processes can produce institutional violence in masculinized spaces of control. While the Wassermann offered a source of hope for protecting against syphilitic infection, in application, the serodiagnostic tool served as a source of scientific validation when misapplied as a quantifiable method for justifying medicolegal interventions in the 20th century US. This examination traces the bioethical legacy of the Wassermann from its 1906 development in Berlin to its appearance in eugenics-based legal mandates in the US. Through an analysis of scientific publications and court records at archives across the East Coast this paper centers those who didn't benefit from the Wassermann and investigates how scientific authority derived from an imperfect diagnostic test was harnessed to reproduce and reinforce the sociocultural biases that linger today.

Committee: Kimberly Hamlin (Advisor); Madelyn Detloff (Committee Member); Amanda McVety (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; Gender; History; Law; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Public Health; Science History; Technology; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2018, English (Arts and Sciences)

Patient narrative is often an undervalued or dismissed genre of writing in the field of literary criticism, largely because the hermeneutics of suspicion leads critics to see these texts as “misery memoirs,” as Ann Jurecic suggests. In this thesis, I argue for a new approach to reading and to criticism that moves away from the hermeneutics of suspicion and instead seeks to find conversations between patient narratives, case narratives, and popular or dominant medical and scientific texts. This shift would have readers focusing not on the ways in which an author might manipulate a story but instead on what the reader might learn from intently examining the resulting conversations. In doing so, I do not argue for a switch in the hierarchy—from doctor-patient to patient-doctor—but instead argue that both patient and case narratives have value; without both texts, we cannot have a full picture of what it is like to live with illness. Making my argument through historical examination, I prove that by examining Charlotte Perkins Gilman's patient narratives—those found in her letters, her diaries, and her autobiography as well as in “The Yellow Wallpaper”—alongside medical and scientific texts from her time, we can not only deepen and nuance current interpretations of these texts but we can also uncover motivations that may not be immediately apparent. While “The Yellow Wallpaper,” for example, has been considered as a critique of patriarchal medicine, a horror story, and a liberation text—among others—it has never been explicitly examined as a patient narrative. This focus allows us to delve deeper into the conversation created between “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Gilman's nonfiction narratives; I focus particularly on how we can see the eugenic arguments within “The Yellow Wallpaper” and how these arguments are connected to Gilman's anxieties about marriage, motherhood, and her usefulness in society. While ignoring patient narratives makes literary critics and histor (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Scanlan (Committee Chair); Mary Kate Hurley (Committee Member); Myrna Perez Sheldon (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; Families and Family Life; Gender; Gender Studies; Health; Health Care; Health Sciences; History; Literature; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Mental Health; Philosophy of Science; Psychology; Rhetoric; Science History; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, History

This dissertation uncovers how, why, and where the modern pet dog originated. The average dog's transition from a working animal to a nonworking companion in the nineteenth-century United Kingdom constituted the dog's most radical alteration of purpose since their initial domestication prior to the establishment of agricultural civilization. This dissertation contends that the modern family dog originated during the long-nineteenth century (1780-1920) primarily in Victorian Britain—the initial nation altered by the interlocking forces of industrialization and urbanization. These processes provided the necessary cultural and material preconditions to reconceptualize this traditional working animal as a nonworking companion. These phenomena also provided the necessary infrastructure to manufacture commodities—from biscuits to soap—that became necessary to maintain dogs. Family dogs altered domestic and urban environments, individual and collective habits, local and global economic markets, and traditional human and canine behaviors. British pet culture surged beyond national boundaries to become the global norm governing appropriate human-dog interaction. Fundamental English practices—such as leash laws—remain normal today alongside British breeds that garner worldwide favor. Despite their integral presence in modern Western culture, however, there remains no holistic—nor interdisciplinary—narrative explaining how the typical dog transformed from a working animal to a nonworking companion. In this sense, this project rectifies this pronounced historiographical absence and knowledge gap for the broader dog-owning public. Answering this question necessitates adopting an interdisciplinary perspective entangling humans and nonhumans since Britons were not solely responsible for creating pet dogs. Rather, dogs actively shaped this process. Understanding dogs in their own right—their cognitive, sensory, and physical capabilities—hinges on including insights from animal s (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chris Otter (Advisor); Nicholas Breyfogle (Committee Member); Bart Elmore (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Animal Sciences; Animals; British and Irish Literature; Comparative; Environmental Studies; European History; European Studies; Families and Family Life; History; Recreation; Science History; Sociology; World History

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2022, History

In September of 1858, a mob of Staten Islanders burned down a quarantine station in order to protect their own health and safety. Though Richmond County citizens destroyed over thirty acres of New York State property in the two-day riot, legal authorities determined that a crime had not been committed. It was an act of "salutary violence." This seemingly paradoxical event shaped the course of health system development in the nation's premier city. Scholars have overlooked the riot's significance or characterized it as an outburst of xenophobic violence. This dissertation argues that the riot was not spontaneous or reactionary. It did not follow a major outbreak of epidemic disease, and it occurred when immigration was at an all-time low. It presents layered contexts to recast the riot as the climax of a longstanding movement that crystalized in the wake of administrative changes at the institution. The polarized political climate of antebellum New York deepened existing tensions, as the quarantine controversy split along party lines. Understanding how momentum for the quarantine relocation movement was gathered through state legislation, sustained through regional support, and ultimately cemented when Staten Islanders became unified by the threat of quarantine expansion, presents a better causal framework for the riot than shallow arguments of fear and xenophobia alone. In the event's aftermath, communities united to resist State conscription to host the "dangerous" institution and lobbied for their own protection. The riot and quarantine relocation movement raised questions about the nature of public health that we still grapple with today: What public does public health protect? This dissertation demonstrates that community level activism, violent protest, and even the will of the mob, shaped the trajectory of public health in the United States.

Committee: Jonathan Sadowsky (Committee Co-Chair); John Broich (Committee Co-Chair); Erin Lamb (Committee Member); Peter Shulman (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Environmental Health; Environmental Justice; Health; Medical Ethics; Public Health

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

My dissertation examines the role of women doctors in the creation and extension of development initiatives in India from 1919-1970. I argue that women doctors became crucial to debates around development, progress, and modernity in twentieth century India. From the nineteenth century, British rule in India was justified by a rhetoric of Europeans bringing social and economic progress to the colony. These goals for the progress of the nation continued into the twentieth century, accompanied by increasing centralization of power, knowledge, and developmental initiatives. My work adds to the scholarship on state power in developing nations like India by focusing on the role of everyday practitioners who were instrumental in the implementation of initiatives aimed at national progress. By centering the activities of women doctors, my dissertation reveals the daily negotiations which underlay the implementation of policies aimed at national progress, as access to healthcare for all Indians was seen as an important indicator of modernity. In this way, my work also brings to light the gendered nature of these daily negotiations in public healthcare, and implementation of state policy more broadly. Based on the assumption that Indian women (fettered by purdah restrictions) would refuse to consult male doctors, women were singled out as having the most difficulty in accessing healthcare. The state concluded that the only solution was to increase the number of women doctors. As improving the health and quality of life of a massive population became inextricably linked with reducing the vast numbers of people, women doctors were tasked with disseminating information about birth control to women and encouraging them to use contraception. Using a combination of archival research and oral history data, my project examines the processes of bureaucratization involved in the expansion of the development-driven state in India.

Committee: Mytheli Sreenivas PhD (Advisor); Birgitte Soland PhD (Committee Member); Thomas McDow PhD (Committee Member); Wendy Singer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education History; Gender; Gender Studies; Health Care; History; Modern History; South Asian Studies; Womens Studies; World History

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2018, History

This thesis examines the ways in which early modern medical texts presented the mind-body connection as it impacted child-bearing women in seventeenth century England. The medieval rediscovery of ancient Greek medical knowledge dominated understandings of health and healing for centuries but reached its widest audiences with the explosion of vernacular language printed materials in the early modern period. Foundational to these repurposed ancient medical theories was the belief that the mind and body interacted in complex ways, requiring frequent monitoring of emotional states to achieve good health. For practitioners concerned with women's reproductive health, women's emotional regulation was vital to desirable physical outcomes throughout the period of childbearing, lasting beyond modern designations of conception and childbirth. Thus, this thesis challenges assumptions of how early modern historians should mark the phases of reproduction and argues instead that childbearing, at least for women, continued through the first years of an infant's life.

Committee: P. Renée Baernstein (Advisor); William Brown (Committee Member); Cynthia Klestinec (Committee Member) Subjects: European History; Gender; Gynecology; History; Obstetrics; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, Comparative Studies

An examination of the history of medicine and pharmacy uncovers evidence of struggles among rival groups of practitioners in the process of establishing modern professional standards. Within these struggles, there is unmistakable evidence of bias during the nineteenth century that privileged the perspectives of the wealthy elite of American society. Drawing upon critical race theory, and the process of racialization as described by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, this dissertation explores the development of medicine and pharmacy in the United States during the nineteenth century with respect to their maturation as it relates to the struggle for authority between sectarian and allopathic practitioners. It focuses on the impact that implicit bias had on what was considered legitimate medicine and who was valued as an authentic physician. The work of Dr. Francis Peyre Porcher constitutes a significant illustration: Porcher's fifty-year career as a medical practitioner, researcher, and influential writer represents a synthesis of his interests in botanic medicine and the most advanced medical practices of his day, which he learned from his studies at the Medical School of South Carolina and France's Paris Clinic. The ensuing period from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century effectively sidelined practices such as botanic medicine as industrialization and capitalism institutionalized medicine and pharmacy into large corporations. It is this dissertation's primary purpose to demonstrate that from a social and cultural standpoint, implicit biases deeply influenced the process of medical professionalization during the nineteenth century; and thus must be acknowledged as having impact on how medicine and pharmacy are practiced, distributed, and received in modern American society.

Committee: Maurice Stevens Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Christine Ballengee-Morris Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Buerki Ph.D., RPH (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; Alternative Medicine; American History; American Studies; Botany; Comparative; Health Care; Medical Ethics; Medicine; Native American Studies; Pharmacy Sciences; Public Policy

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, English (Arts and Sciences)

Only relatively recently has paid nursing come to be viewed as a respectable profession for women. Early-nineteenth-century literature describes hired nurses as low-class, slovenly women who smoked, drank, and abused their patients. Middle-class British society feared that hired nurses were low-class, ignorant, unsympathetic, unfeminine, and too independent from men. Beyond Nightingale examines how literature from the early nineteenth century through the early twentieth century helped alleviate these fears and altered the public perception of nursing by presenting paid nurses as middle-class women who were sympathetic, selfless, and subservient to doctors. Many authors suggested that nursing ability was not dependent upon natural femininity or personal character, but relied on training and experience. By altering the public's perception of paid nursing, literary portrayals of nursing facilitated its transformation from an extension of the feminine, domestic sphere into an efficient medical profession for women. Beyond Nightingale examines works by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, and L. T. Meade, among others, to challenge the prevailing myth that Florence Nightingale single-handedly reformed nursing in the mid-1850s. Using World War I propaganda, periodicals, novels, and memoirs, Benham also explores how the desire for efficiency was encouraged and contested in literary portrayals of nursing from 1900 – 1918. Great War nursing literature emphasized efficiency as the most important objective in nursing care. As a result, sympathy was increasingly devalued because it hindered the efficiency of the medical machine. This tension between sympathetic and efficient care has not been resolved, but continues to plague the medical profession today. Beyond Nightingale considers not only traditional literary works, but also a variety of non-literary archival sources including nursing manuals, sanitary pamphlets, women's periodicals, and Voluntary Aid Deta (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Joseph McLaughlin (Advisor); Carey Snyder (Committee Member); Nicole Reynolds (Committee Member); Albert Rouzie (Committee Member); Jacqueline Wolf (Other) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Gender Studies; History; Literature; Medicine; Nursing; Public Health; Sanitation; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2023, History

Medieval Europe was a period of development and change, none of which is more evident than through the transition of medical authority from women and magic to solely men and medicine. At the start of the Middle Ages, magic and medicine held an interwoven relationship, where women could freely practice and function as medical authorities within their communities alongside men. Their presence as healers provided them with a rare opportunity to escape from the traditional confines of the patriarchal society of the Middle Ages. However, the creation of medical universities, which excluded women from enrolling, sought to eliminate the role which magic held within the medical field. With its usefulness in through medicine relegated, an opposition towards magic begun developing and the connection between magic and witchcraft to the nature of women was solidified. Women's already vulnerable status within society added onto the perceived threat of witchcraft opened the door for direct persecution women. Medical practitioners, ecclesiastical writers, the Christian church, governing bodies, and local authorities all contributed to the curation of stereotypes surrounding witchcraft practitioners. As a result, the Inquisition and larger witch hunt movement developed, specifically targeting women. The witchcraft trials were the final deadly product of this movement and were overwhelmingly disproportionate in their indictment and execution of women.

Committee: Christian Raffensperger (Advisor); Nona Moskowitz (Committee Member); Scott Rosenberg (Committee Member) Subjects: Alternative Medicine; Folklore; Gender; Gender Studies; History; Medicine; Medieval History; Middle Ages; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, English

This dissertation will present a novel corpus of eighteenth-century medical satires to perform a reparation on the secular epistemological terrain of the eighteenth-century Medical Enlightenment. It employs an allegorical method of interpretation informed by syncretic-feminist theology to a collection of eighteenth-century Enlightenment literature to demonstrate how the satirical mode was used to push back against the bodily technologies of the medical profession. This project helps us to identify the characteristic features of these topical satires, which voice a deep epistemological discomfort with the principles, methods, and practices of the emergent secular medical field. Medical satires feature narrators and targets that elide the figures of the physician and the satirist as humoral healers, scientific methodologies applied to absurd and bawdy topics, and a considerable amount of human and animal suffering resulting from poorly-applied medical treatments. This dissertation then reads Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy as a virtuosic representative of the medical satire subgenre whose narrator thoroughly foils both his own and a reader's attempt to rationalize and unify his creation and circumstance. This project hopes to offer literary and medical scholars an allegorical perspective into medicine's literary origins and entanglements to support the gradual recovery and revitalization of pre-Medical Enlightenment medical wisdom.

Committee: Sandra Macpherson (Advisor); Jennifer Higginbotham (Committee Member); David Brewer (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature

Bachelor of Science, Walsh University, 2021, Honors

In 19th century Great Britain, the medical profession's rising demand for human bodies to dissect was stymied by the limited legal supply of bodies. The body shortage led to the rise of resurrectionists, who dug up fresh human remains and sold them to anatomy schools. At the same time, liberal ideologies, which focused on concepts of freedom, rose to prominence in British politics. As a result, Britons gained status as liberal subjects, who are individuals believed to have a capacity for justice and the motive to serve the public good. Prior to 1832, there were no laws protecting corpses; bodies were not viewed as property or an object that could be legally possessed or traded. The Anatomy Act of 1832 was designed to create a legal supply of human bodies, which would eliminate the need for resurrectionists, and to address public fears. This thesis argues that the growing issue of body snatchers, the evolution of liberalism, and the development and professionalization of the medical field during the 19th century established human corpses as liberal subjects which granted them specific rights after death. This was achieved in part through the Anatomy Act of 1832 and subsequent Acts of Parliament. I argue that corpses can be viewed as liberal subjects that serve the government (and by extension, the public good) in order to do what was believed to be best for the purposes of science (which represents that which is rational and reasonable). If corpses developed liberal subject status, they also gained rights; essentially, a living person could agree to serve the government by donating their body to science, and in return, the government protected the rights of their bodies to be treated respectively after death.

Committee: Dr. Rachel Constance (Advisor) Subjects: Anatomy and Physiology; Human Remains; Legal Studies; Medicine; Science History; Surgery

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

The Kirkbride plan for American mental hospitals first took hold in the late 1840s and remained the most popular floor plan for insane asylums for the next forty years. Kirkbride asylums were considered vital, scientifically advanced centers of mental health treatment throughout the nineteenth century, but quickly became outdated, overcrowded, understaffed, and dilapidated. Today only about one-third of the original Kirkbride buildings constructed from the 1840s to the 1890s remain standing, but their impact on the national imagination is both enormous and permanent. This thesis for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is a combination of memoir and literary journalism documenting the origins, lifespan, decline, and historic preservation of Kirkbride asylums around the continental United States, as well as the author's own experiences with bipolar disorder and psychiatric care.

Committee: Lee Martin (Advisor); Michelle Herman (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Architecture; Fine Arts; History; Journalism; Landscape Architecture; Mental Health; Psychology; Public Health

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2016, History

This thesis article explores the history of Cincinnati's Episcopal Hospital for Children during the Progressive Era. The article describes an extended process of professionalization whereby the diocesan charity became a vanguard organization in the nascent specialization of pediatric medicine. This transformation was largely a cultural one. While the hospital's annual reports maintained discursive continuity about its central mission, distinct interpretations of the concepts of child welfare and health by intra-organizational groups acted as the key drivers of organizational change. The Board of Lady Managers believed that the organization needed to provide holistic care, emotional security, and Christian salvation to poor children. In contrast, doctors from the hospital's Medical Board emphasized the need for scientific healthcare practices and policies. Crises and conflict pitted the two groups against one another, ultimately resulting in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Pediatric Research Foundation of the 1930s.

Committee: Amanda McVety (Advisor); Elena Alberran (Committee Member); Steven Conn (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Business Administration; Economic History; Entrepreneurship; Gender Studies; Health; Health Care; Health Care Management; History; Management; Modern History; Organization Theory; Public Health; Religious History; Science History; Social Work; Sociology; Spirituality; Welfare; Womens Studies

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2015, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

This dissertation critiques the discourse of traditional ecological knowledge described as embedded in indigenous peoples' longevity in location, for the purpose of understanding the embodiment of ecological knowledge in culture. The aim of this research is to examine the historical and epistemic complexity of traditional ecological knowledge that may be both established from the length of time people reside in a specific ecosystem and constitutive of negotiations between and among different cultures. I choose the specific case of the negotiation of plant knowledge for women's reproductive health among Native, African, and European groups as those negotiations unfolded on the American continent from European settlement in the early 17th century to the post-Emancipation period of the early 20th century. By focusing on ethnobotanical accounts of women's reproductive health knowledge I explain how this knowledge persisted or changed as people moved, and how this knowledge might have been created through negotiations across cultural boundaries. It is my contention that traditional ecological knowledge is simultaneously maintained and altered through peoples migrations and negotiations. To test this contention I ask a number of key questions from my analysis of historical ethnogynecological evidence. To what extent is traditional ecological knowledge embodied in people and to what extent is it emplaced in an ecosystem? How is the traditional ecological knowledge of longevity in place different from traditional ecological knowledge that shifts as people migrate? What is the evidence that traditional ecological knowledge is formed through negotiations across boundaries of culture, race, and epistemology, and does this change the framing of traditional ecological knowledge discourse? My research conceives of a discourse of traditional ecological knowledge that explicitly addresses issues of both ecologically emplaced knowledge and culturally embedded knowledge. I demonstrat (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alesia Maltz PhD (Committee Chair); James W. Jordan PhD (Committee Member); Yuriko Saito PhD (Committee Member); Herman H. Shugart PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; American History; Botany; Environmental Studies; Native Americans

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2013, History

In response to racist discrimination and the crisis of African American health, Black physicians in the early twentieth century stressed the development of professional standards. The establishment of the National Medical Association and its journal became the main forum of discussion in the pursuit of this professionalism. The discourse in the Journal of the National Medical Association reveals the state of African American health and the Black medical profession during the early twentieth century. Journal contributors used the rhetoric of professionalism when addressing the major obstacles for Black physicians. They demanded medical education reform not only to match standards set by White medical professionals, but also in an effort to produce more competent physicians. Black physicians contributed to the Black hospital movement with the hopes that hospitals would provide opportunities for physicians to improve their skills and promote their legitimacy. The journal expressed the need for public health initiatives that would display the professional authority and medical competency of Black physicians. This thesis argues that the emphasis on professional development represents a key component of the identity of Black physicians. Moreover, Black physicians recognized that establish professional legitimacy and authority was integral to shaping medicine and addressing African American health in the future. The pursuit of professionalism, above all else, drove Black medical professionals to pursue medical education reform, the hospital movement, and public engagement.

Committee: Walter Grunden Ph.D. (Advisor); Nicole Jackson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American History; Health; History; Medicine

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, History

This is a history of the emergence of a modern Japanese identity in the latter half of the nineteenth century as seen through the lens of scientific medicine. This study makes the argument that Japanese physicians' construction of a modern identity was a two-fold process that identified Japan in line with Western imperialism and Western fields of knowledge, while conceptually distancing the island nation from nearby Asian neighbors. This perspective, which reflected the growing understanding among Japanese of their country's emerging place in the world in the Meiji era (1868-1912), occurred within the context of the broad social, political, economic and military reforms that defined this period. Western medicine based on the rational proofs and perceived universality of scientific inquiry, positioned Japanese physicians as agents of modernity. I examine the way scientific medicine informed Japanese modernity in two ways: I begin by looking at how the Japanese Red Cross Society nurse came to be perceived as a national heroine, then I explain the Japanese Army Medical Bureau's struggle to prevent beriberi, a nutritional deficiency illness in its ranks. These case studies offer a window into the interplay between modern medicine and traditional social values and underscore the reality that a field of knowledge is not adopted, but rather adapted and negotiated. In this case identity formation in Japan was not merely the result of scientific medicine transforming Japan, but was also influenced by Japanese society's impact on scientific medicine. For Japanese physicians it was not enough to assert a modern identity they were also compelled to draw clear distinctions between a modern Japan and what they perceived to be a “backward” Asia. They did this by using disease categories related to cholera and other contagious illnesses to define the Asian continent as a particularly dangerous epidemiological space. In addition, Japanese practitioners of scientific medicine (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Bartholomew PhD (Advisor); Philip Brown PhD (Committee Member); Cynthia Brokaw PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Greek and Latin

Recent scholarship of identity issues in Imperial Rome has focused on the complicated intersections of “Greek” and “Roman” identity, a perfect microcosm in which to examine the issue in the high-stakes world of medical practice where physicians from competing Greek-speaking traditions interacted with wealthy Roman patients. I argue that not only did Roman patients and politicians have a variety of methods at their disposal for neutralizing the perceived threat of foreign physicians, but that the foreign physicians also were given ways to mitigate the substantial dangers involved in treating the Roman elite. I approach the issue from three standpoints: the political rhetoric surrounding foreign medicines, the legislation in place to protect doctors and patients, and the ethical issues debated by physicians and laypeople alike. I show that Roman lawmakers, policy makers, and physicians had a variety of ways by which the physical, political, and financial dangers of foreign doctors and Roman patients posed to one another could be mitigated. The dissertation argues that despite barriers of xenophobia and ethnic identity, physicians practicing in Greek traditions were fairly well integrated into the cultural milieu of imperial Rome, and were accepted (if not always trusted) members of society. Their inclusion into the fabric of Romanitas prefigures the later integration of Roman and Greek identity that was to culminate in the Greek-speaking Romans of the Byzantine Empire.

Committee: Duane W. Roller PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Frank Coulson PhD (Committee Co-Chair); Julia Nelson-Hawkins PhD (Committee Member); Fritz Graf PhD (Committee Member); Douglas Prize PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies; Health Care; History

MA, Kent State University, 2012, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

The ideology of Republican motherhood, a political philosophy that equated patriotism with gendered social constructions of womanhood, within the early years of the French Third Republic, influenced the implementation of state mandated girls' education in the metropole. Expanding upon already existing gendered cultural constructions of womanhood and the social role of French women, politicians sought to promote the concept of Republican motherhood in the textbooks of school girls to prepare them for their future role as mothers of strong and loyal French citizens. The ideology of patriotic womanhood, under the Third Republican government, was not only a guiding principle for domestic policy, but was also intrinsic to French colonial policy in Algeria. Through the use of a common nineteenth-century European practice known as woman-to-woman medical care, Dr. Dorothee Chellier, a female physicians under the auspice of the colonial government provided medical care to indigenous women in Algeria. Chellier published multiple written accounts of her medical advocacy for indigenous women's health care and her account clearly demonstrates that the ideology of Republican motherhood was a factor in her participation in the medical missions as well as an important facet within the Republican government's policy of assimilating the indigenous population of Algeria by catering to the women within the Berber tribes and predicting that they would not only personally recognize the benefice of French medical care, but pass on these beliefs to their children. Chellier and the Algerian colonial governor sought to assimilate the indigenous population to French social and economic frameworks, but also to ameliorate the fractious environment between the European colonial settlers, indigenous groups, and the French military. Thus, Republican motherhood was a framework used in the metropole and in the colonial context by Republican politicians who sought to harness the power of a mother's i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rebecca Pulju PhD (Advisor) Subjects: European History

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2006, American Culture Studies/English

Why is sleep, a moment that is physiologically full and mentally boundless, thought to be a moment of absence and powerlessness? Where did this devalued notion of sleep come from and how can we situate sleep studies within a continuation of a historical processes and economic infuences? In other words, how does sleep effect and exist within systems of power? To answer these questions I turn to a range of scholarship and theoretical studies to examine the complexities and dynamics at work within the cultural discources on sleep. By creating a genealogy of sleep I am able to track the way notions of sleep have changed and evolved over time. I develope a theoretical framework to examine how the Enlightenment effected notions of sleep by strengthening a cultural disposition for logical, rational and phonomenological modes of knowledge. I find that the advent of modernity is signified by the moment in which sleep, darkness and unkowing become negative while being awake, light and knowledge become positive. To understand how sleep (and sleep studies) operates in contemporary situations I examine them within the economy of time in which clock time is conflated with money. Here I also visit the way sleep functions in relation to work in a neo-Taylorist management era. I offer an account of sleep's connections to passivity in the within patriarchal systems of thought. I determine that the cultural politics of sleep and sleep disorders point to a rift in the Western Self because of a presumed simultaneity of thinking, acting and being. I have engaged in a range of disciplines and use theory, historical studies, textual analysis , and autoethnography as methodologies to outline some of the major cultural discussions that surround sleep.

Committee: Erin Labbie (Advisor) Subjects: