CFP: [American] Doctors, Patients, and Medical Treatments in Nineteenth-Century American Womenâs Writing

full name / name of organization: 
Georgia Kreiger
contact email: 

Northeastern MLA
Buffalo, NY
April 10-13, 2008

This panel will focus on portrayals of doctors, patients, and medical
treatments in nineteenth-century American women’s writing. Papers may
explore 1) types of health care such as conventional medicine, homeopathic
medicine, mesmerism, faith healing, and others; 2) types of doctor-patient
relationships, with attention to gender-inflected interaction, domination
and submission, symbiotic interaction, masochism, or sexual exploitation;
and 3) types of health caregivers, such as mothers, slaves, herbalists,
spiritualists, mediums, charlatans, and others.
 
During the nineteenth century, American women were viewed as both domestic
angels who sacrificed themselves and their interests to nurse ill family
members, ease their transport at death, and prepare their bodies for
burial. At the same time, though, women were portrayed as weak, prone to
physical and psychological illness, and dependent upon physicians and other
health caregivers to alleviate their ills. In nineteenth-century
literature, women are portrayed as both caregivers and patients, as
purveyors of the healing arts and as those most in need of healing.
 
This panel will contribute to our understanding of the relationships
between women, illness, and medicine in nineteenth-century American
culture. Women’s interest in conventional and non-conventional medicine,
their perception of themselves as physicians and patients, their attitudes
toward medical treatments designed specifically for women, and their
connections to health and health care will be explored.
 
Email 250-word proposals to Georgia Kreiger at gkreiger_at_allegany.edu or
mail to

Dr. Georgia R. Kreiger
Box 59
Allegany College of Maryland
12401 Willowbrook Road
Cumberland, MD 21502

 
Include with your proposal your name, affiliation, email address, postal
address, and telephone number. Also please specify any A/V requirements.

Deadline for Proposals: September 15, 2007

 

 

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Received on Wed Aug 01 2007 - 21:31:20 EDT

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