»Gold Fever« and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West

by Sigrid Schönfelder

Overview

Throughout its history, the American West symbolized a place of hope and new beginnings, where anything was possible, especially for men. However, the history written until the 1970s and 1980s excluded women. Sigrid Schönfelder illustrates how the American West served as a catalytic gold mine for many transformations for women. It draws on the life narratives of three healthcare providers whose devotion within the social reform movements of the long nineteenth century contributed significantly to shaping healthcare policies. Their stories show how women contributed to place-making in the West and served as role models for other women to enter the field of medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783837666564
Publication date:	06/20/2023
Series:	American Culture Studies
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.86(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sigrid Schönfelder completed her studies at the Technische Universität Dresden, where she majored in North American Studies, focusing on concepts of identity in Native American autobiographies. Her research on the transformation of nineteenth-century women's lives and medicine in the American West at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the Universität Passau, Germany, culminated in her Ph.D. thesis.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter 1
Contents 5
Acknowledgments 9
Abstract 13
Introduction 15
Introduction 37
2.1 Women's Life Writings in the "Forgotten Century" 42
2.2 "Damned mob of scribbling women" 43
2.3 Narrative Spaces of Life Writing 51
2.4 Native American Autobiography: A "Mangled" Genre 59
3.1 Cultural Concepts of Space and Place 69
3.2 "Manifest Destiny Aesthetics" - Cultural (Mis)representations of the West 75
3.3 Bringing "Progress" to the West 78
3.4 Go West, Young Woman! 81
3.5 Cultural Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Women's "Proper Place" 90
3.6 The Transformation of Domestic Boundaries and Nineteenth-Century Medicine 105
4.1 Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte: "The First Woman Physician Among Her People" 121
4.2 Patty Bartlett Sessions: The Role of Mormon Women and Medicine in Settling Salt Lake, Utah 177
4.3 Life of Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair: "Mother of [Oregon's] Sterilization Bill" 204
Introduction 257
Works Cited 267

Editorial Reviews

"Die Autorin [hat] eine gut geschriebene und umfänglich recherchierte Studie vorgelegt, die zu Debatten einlädt."

Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, 10 (2024) - Florian G. Mildenberger