Scholars Award: The Science of Women's Rights: Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Women's Health in late Nineteenth-Century America

学者奖：妇女权利科学：玛丽·普特南·雅可比和十九世纪末美国妇女健康政治

• 批准号: 0724513
• 负责人: Carla Bittel
• 金额: $ 9.93万
• 依托单位: Loyola Marymount University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-15 至 2009-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0724513&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Scholars; Award; Science; Women; Rights

This is a proposal for a Scholars Award to provide research funding to study the science and politics of Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906), one of the most important women practitioners of scientific medicine in late nineteenth-century America. The objective of this project is to investigate the relationship between science and women's rights activism, and to study the biological knowledge produced by Jacobi, and women in her cohort, to understand contested views on the female body in the post-Civil War era. This will be done through archival research, using personal correspondence, photographs, institutional and medical society records, unpublished writings, and birth and death records. It will also involve an in-depth reading and analysis of medical texts and published articles in nineteenth-century medical journals, newspapers, and collected works. It will result in the completion of a book-length study.Intellectual Merit: The intellectual merit is fourfold. First, it will provide historians of gender and science the first full-length study of a central figure in the history of medical science. Mary Putnam Jacobi was one of the most significant women doctors of the late nineteenth century because she boldly opposed the masculine monopoly of scientific medicine. She was the first woman admitted to the Ecole de Medecine in Paris and to several medical societies in the United States, including the New York Academy of Medicine. Her achievements and scientific identity gave her an entree into both men's and women's medical circles. Widely published in medical journals, literary magazines, and newspapers, she supported a scientific model of medicine when such models were subject to great debate in medical communities. At the same time, she was a devoted activist who believed science could not only reform society, it could elevate the status of American women. This study also uses Jacobi to analyze several key themes in the history of medicine and science, including definitions of positivism, debates about animal and human experimentation, and disagreements about the role of the laboratory for therapeutics. It also uses Jacobi to address several themes in science and technology studies, including knowledge production, boundaries between science and non-science, and definitions of expertise. Second, this project will use Jacobi as a starting point for analyzing the knowledge produced by women physicians and its relationship to their political activism. Third, this project will also add to theoretical discussions about gender and science as it analyzes how Jacobi constructed her scientific identity and created medical knowledge to oppose the gendering of scientific medicine. Fourth, it will provide new perspectives on questions about gender and knowledge production, using examples from medicine to help revise the idea that science in the nineteenth century was essentially a masculine project. As a result, it will show how Jacobi and other practitioners and activists contested explanations for "female maladies," notions of female physical and mental weakness, and theories of sex differences. The project will reveal how women weighed in on the science of sex differences and produced their own "sexual science" to describe female characteristics in more positive and politically favorable terms.Broader Impacts: This study will have broader impact in three areas. First, it will be a teaching tool to advance understanding of the history of women in the scientific disciplines. Second, this research will provide a unique opportunity to introduce Science and Society to Loyola Marymount University with the hope of integrating its interdisciplinary methods and subject matters into the curriculum. Third, this project will help broaden the participation of women in the sciences by providing historical perspective on current debates about women practitioners, sex differences, and female cognition. This issue garnered national attention in 2005 when Harvard University President Lawrence Summers cited biological differences in women as one way to explain why women were less successful in the scientific disciplines. Critics of Summers, and the new literature on sex differences, worry that this biological focus on female difference ignores social factors, and will negatively shape how women are viewed as practitioners. Similar concerns were raised and debated by Jacobi and her colleagues. The current debate shows how the role of women in the professions and the female intellect is still contested, and that the science of female biology remains controversial, political and extremely significant in our own time.

这是一个学者奖的建议，提供研究资金，以研究玛丽普特南雅可比（1842-1906）的科学和政治，在19世纪末美国科学医学最重要的女性从业者之一。该项目的目的是调查科学与妇女权利活动之间的关系，并研究Jacobi和她的同龄人中的妇女所产生的生物学知识，以了解内战后时代对女性身体的争议观点。这将通过档案研究，使用个人信件，照片，机构和医疗社会记录，未发表的著作，出生和死亡记录。它还将涉及深入的阅读和医学文本和19世纪的医学期刊，报纸和收集的作品发表的文章分析。它将导致完成一本书的长度的研究。智力优点：智力优点是四倍。首先，它将为性别和科学历史学家提供医学科学史上第一个中心人物的全面研究。玛丽·普特南·雅可比是19世纪末最重要的女医生之一，因为她勇敢地反对男性对科学医学的垄断。她是第一位被巴黎医学院和包括纽约医学院在内的美国几个医学学会录取的女性。她的成就和科学身份使她得以进入男性和女性医学界。她在医学期刊、文学杂志和报纸上广泛发表文章，她支持医学的科学模式，而这种模式在医学界引起了很大的争论。与此同时，她还是一位忠诚的活动家，她相信科学不仅可以改革社会，还可以提高美国妇女的地位。本研究还使用Jacobi分析了医学和科学史上的几个关键主题，包括实证主义的定义，关于动物和人体实验的争论，以及关于实验室治疗作用的分歧。它还使用Jacobi来解决科学和技术研究中的几个主题，包括知识生产，科学与非科学之间的界限以及专业知识的定义。其次，本项目将以雅可比为起点，分析女医生所产生的知识及其与政治活动的关系。第三，该项目还将增加关于性别和科学的理论讨论，因为它分析了雅可比如何构建她的科学身份，并创造了医学知识，以反对科学医学的性别化。第四，它将提供关于性别和知识生产问题的新视角，利用医学方面的例子来帮助修正世纪的科学基本上是男性项目的观点。因此，它将展示雅各比和其他实践者和活动家如何对“女性疾病”、女性身心虚弱的概念以及性别差异理论的解释提出质疑。该项目将揭示女性如何权衡性别差异的科学，并产生自己的“性科学”，以更积极和政治上有利的条件来描述女性的特征。更广泛的影响：这项研究将在三个领域产生更广泛的影响。首先，它将成为一个教学工具，以促进对科学学科中妇女历史的理解。其次，这项研究将提供一个独特的机会，介绍科学与社会洛约拉玛丽蒙特大学与整合其跨学科的方法和学科事项到课程的希望。第三，该项目将有助于扩大妇女在科学领域的参与，为当前关于妇女从业者、性别差异和女性认知的辩论提供历史视角。这个问题在2005年引起了全国的关注，当时哈佛大学校长劳伦斯·萨默斯（Lawrence Summers）引用了女性的生物学差异来解释为什么女性在科学学科中不那么成功。萨默斯的批评者和关于性别差异的新文献担心，这种对女性差异的生物学关注忽视了社会因素，并将负面影响女性作为从业者的看法。雅可比和她的同事们也提出了类似的担忧并进行了辩论。目前的辩论表明，女性在职业和女性知识中的作用仍然存在争议，女性生物学科学仍然存在争议，政治性和在我们这个时代极其重要。