Dissertation Research: Fighting Science with Science: Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Women's Health

论文研究：以科学对抗科学：玛丽·普特南·雅各比和妇女健康的政治

• 批准号: 9910963
• 负责人: Joan Brumberg
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-02-01 至 2002-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9910963&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Fighting; Science; Mary

Historians of women and medicine have paid great attention to the history of the female body and its social construction by men of medicine in nineteenth-century America. But less attention has been granted to studying the medical science of women physicians and understanding how women's knowledge and practices reflected their own notions of gender, society, and politics. This dissertation research project provides travel funds to archives in order to examine the published works of Mary Putman Jacobi, Abraham Jacobi, and other relevant social activists and physicians. This research will contribute to the completion of a dissertation which examines the life and work of Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906). The dissertation's aim is to achieve a greater understanding of how women physicians, especially those interested in women's rights and equality, produced scientific knowledge that reflected their social concerns. It will trace how women physicians like Jacobi used science to contest the pathological constructions of female biology that were employed to justify women's exclusion from the spheres of politics, the professions, and higher education. Mary Putnam Jacobi was the most respected and influential woman doctor of her time, well-educated and widely published on a variety of medical issues. She supported and put into practice the main tenets of scientific medicine, which helped her gain the support of medical men. Jacobi was also an adamant social activist who worked on behalf of women's rights, suffrage, and education. This cultural biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi will tie this activism to the results of her scientific inquiry, showing how Jacobi's social experience and political ideologies shaped her theories on menstruation, hysteria, and physiology. This dissertation will be the first scholarly biography to use Jacobi as a starting point for understanding the social experiences of women physicians, and the wider intellectual debates among physicians in the nineteenth century. This study will also add historical perspective to contemporary and sociological discussions on gender and science. Feminist theorists have challenged the notion of objectivity and argued for new forms of feminist empiricism. Jacobi stands as a historical example of a woman scientist who pursued scientific objectivity in the hope of producing medical knowledge that was more favorable to women. This dissertation will show, however, that like feminist scientists of today, Jacobi's work remained bound to her social, cultural, and political interests and concerns.

19世纪美国女性和医学史家十分关注男性医学女性身体及其社会建构的历史。但对研究女医生的医学科学以及了解女性的知识和实践如何反映她们自己的性别、社会和政治观念的关注较少。本论文研究项目为档案馆提供旅行资金，以审查玛丽·普特曼·雅各比、亚伯拉罕·雅各比以及其他相关社会活动家和医生的已发表作品。这项研究将有助于完成一篇考察玛丽·普特南·雅各比(Mary Putnam Jacobi，1842-1906)的生平和工作的论文。这篇论文的目的是更好地理解女医生，特别是那些对妇女权利和平等感兴趣的女医生是如何产生反映她们社会关切的科学知识的。它将追溯像雅各比这样的女医生如何利用科学来挑战女性生物学的病理结构，这些结构被用来证明女性被排除在政治、职业和高等教育领域之外是合理的。玛丽·普特南·雅各比是她那个时代最受尊敬和最有影响力的女医生，她受过良好的教育，在各种医学问题上发表了广泛的文章。她支持并实践了科学医学的主要原则，这帮助她获得了医学男性的支持。雅各比也是一位坚定的社会活动家，他为妇女的权利、选举权和教育而工作。这本玛丽·普特南·雅各比的文化传记将把这种激进主义与她的科学调查结果联系起来，展示雅各比的社会经历和政治意识形态如何塑造了她关于月经、歇斯底里和生理学的理论。这篇论文将是第一部以雅各比为起点的学术传记，以了解女医生的社会经历，以及19世纪医生之间更广泛的智力辩论。这项研究还将为当代和社会学关于性别和科学的讨论增加历史视角。女权主义理论家挑战客观性的概念，并主张新形式的女权主义经验主义。雅各比是一位女科学家的历史典范，她追求科学客观性，希望创造出更有利于女性的医学知识。然而，这篇论文将表明，就像今天的女权主义科学家一样，雅各比的工作仍然与她的社会、文化和政治利益和关切有关。