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Photographic Research on Obstetric and Gynecological Instruments

Auvard Weighted Speculum from the L. M. Draper Collection..
Auvard Weighted Speculum from the L. M. Draper Collection.

With generous assistance from the History of Medicine travel grant, I traveled to Duke University to view and photograph historical obstetric and gynecological tools housed in Duke’s History of Medicine Collections at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.  There I viewed various artifact collections donated by practicing regional doctors, including the L. M. Draper Collection, the George D. & Evelyn Wilbanks Collection, and several anonymous collections.  I also viewed anatomical lift-the-flap guide books, lift-the-flap anatomical fugitive sheets and the Trent Collection of Ivory Anatomical Manikins, all of which were used to teach medical procedures, including delivery.

Having access to Duke’s collection was an incredible experience.  I treated it like a short artist residency.  I set up my lights, a pop-up tent, my camera and a tripod in a study room within the library.  Every morning, a cart was wheeled in with OB/GYN tools, anatomy text books and glass slides.  It was exciting (and a little nerve-wracking), opening up boxes and not knowing their contents.  For some items, I felt I was discovering the files for the first time.  In a way I was: besides the archivists who received and catalogued them, some of the items had never been requested.  I often felt as though I were in the medical field—donning nitrile gloves, carefully removing the items from their boxes, gently lying them down on the fabric of my pop-up lighting tent, careful not to harm them in any way.  I found myself photographing them as abstractions or as jewelry, a style of cataloguing unlike other projects I have photographed.

Smellie-Style Obstetrical Forceps from the George & Evelyn Wilbanks Collection.
Smellie-Style Obstetrical Forceps from the George & Evelyn Wilbanks Collection.

My work focuses on historical and contemporary women’s lives and I am particularly interested in the past’s technology and how it relates to today.  I have previously done photographic projects on antique vibrators, social media and the practice of keeping a commonplace book and with this project, the history of labor and delivery technology.  While the process of getting pregnant has changed with IVF and the location of delivery may have changed, the actual process of delivery has not changed.  Although American society emphasizes new products & experiences, and the medical world uses recent technology & procedures, women continue to deliver only one of two ways—vaginally or via Cesarean section.  Prior to my arrival at Duke, I assumed the tools used in labor and delivery were harmful to the infants and delivering women.  I also wondered how deadly labor actually was—in fictionalized accounts in both books and screen, no female who delivered a newborn ever lived, and seldom the child.  I expected antique tools to be brutal and different in appearance than today.  It surprised me that many of the tools I photographed resembled contemporary tools, only with time’s effect through rust or evident aging.

My research at Duke is the beginning of both my project and into further research on the history of the OB/GYN tools and their uses.  Although in its early stages, I plan to study these tools’ history, as well as their use & influence today.  The final images may be printed as slides, emulating turn of the twentieth century magic-lantern plates or late-twentieth century educational slide shows.  Whatever form these images take, I was particularly inspired by the anatomical lift-the flap books & broad sides and will create an artist book influenced by these interactive educational guides.  I look forward to sharing future developments of this project. Thank you to everyone at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library for their assistance during my stay.

Post contributed by History of Medicine Travel Grant recipient Lindsey Beal. Beal is a photo-based artist and professor in Providence, Rhode Island.  Her work and further information can be found at lindseybeal.com.

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Featured, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Travel Grants

Now Accepting 2016-2017 Travel Grant Applications!

Don't worry, we won't make you take the bus.
Don’t worry, we won’t make you take the bus.

Researchers! The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for our 2016-2017 travel grants.

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture,  the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, and the History of Medicine Collections will each award up to $1,000 per recipient to fund travel and other expenses related to visiting the Rubenstein Library. The Rubenstein also offers the Eleanore and Harold Jantz Fellowship, a $1500 award for researchers whose work would benefit from use of the Jantz Collections.

The grants are open to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, independent scholars, artists, and activists who live more than 100 miles from Durham, NC and whose research projects would benefit from access to collections held by one of the centers.

More details—and the grant application—may be found on our grants website. Applications must be submitted no later than 5:00 PM EST on January 29, 2016. Recipients will be announced in March 2016.

 

Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, History of Medicine, Travel Grants

Congratulations to our 2014-2015 grant recipients!

The Rubenstein Library’s three research center annually award travel grants to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars through a competitive application process. Congratulations to this year’s recipients, we look forward to working with all of you!

Courtney Thompson will use materials related to phrenology such as this small ivory bust in her research.
Courtney Thompson will use materials related to phrenology such as this small ivory bust in her research.

History of Medicine

Cali Buckley, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Art History, for dissertation work on, “Women of Substance: The Materiality of Anatomical Models and the Control of Women’s Medicine in Early Modern Europe.”

Alicia Puglionesi, Johns Hopkins University, Institute of the History of Medicine, for dissertation work on “The Astonishment of Experience: Americans and Psychical Research, 1885-1935.”

Courtney Thompson, Yale University, Department of the History of Science and Medicine, for dissertation work on “Criminal Minds: Medicine, Law, and the Phrenological Impulse in America, 1830-1890.”

 

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History

FOARE Fellowship for Outdoor Advertising Research

Craig Lee, Department of Art History, University of Delaware, “Letter Building: Signage, Supergraphics, and the Rise of Semiotic Structure in Modern American Architecture”

Daniel Towns, Department of History, Stanford University, “The View and the Value: Historical Geography of Signs in San Francisco”

 

John Furr Fellowships for JWT Research

Lisa Haushofer, Department of History, Harvard University, “Edible Health: ‘Health Foods’ in Science, Industry, Culture in Britain and the United States, 1884-1950

 

Alvin A. Achenbaum Travel Grants

Dr. Cynthia Meyers, Department of Communications, College of Mount Saint Vincent, “Advertising Agencies and the Decline of Sponsorship in the Network Era of Television”

Dr. Cristina Ziliani: Economics, University of Parma, Italy, “Premium Sales Promotions: A History of Practice and Research, 1890-1990”

Cara Fallon, Department of History, Harvard University, “The Emerging Concept of Healthy Aging in the United States, 1920-1990”

Catherine Hennessey Wolter, Musicology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, “Sound Conversions in Print: A Cultural History of the Player Piano and Early Radio in America Through the Lens of Print Media”

Kelly Jones, History of Medicine, State University of New York – Stony Brook, “’New Hope for Headache Sufferers’: Pain and its Control in Advertisements for Headache Remedies, 1950s-1970s

Daniel McKay, Independent Scholar, “Trading Fears: Marketing the ‘Japan Brand’ to American Tourists and Consumers”

 

John Hope Franklin Research Center 2014-15 Travel Grant Awardees

Emilye Crosby, State University of New York-Geneseo Topic: “Anything I Was Big Enough To Do: Women and Gender in SNCC”

Paul Grant, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Topic: “Unimagining the Christian Nation: Alienation, Memory, and German-African Reciprocity in Akropong, Ghana 1835-1938”

Nicole Maurantonio, University of Richmond, Topic: “Ombudsman for Humanity: Chuck Stone, Mediation, and the Graterford Prison Hostage Crisis”

Gilet Rosenblith, University of Virginia, Topic: “Low Income African American Women in the South and the Carceral State”

Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado, Topic: “American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States”

Adam Wolkoff, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Topic: “Possession and Power: A comparative social and legal history of capitalist social relations in the late nineteenth-century United States”

 

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture Mary Lily Travel Grants

Dr. Georgina Colby, linguistics and cultural studies, University of Westminster, for a book on Kathy Acker combining philosophical analysis with literary and critical theory, exploring connections between feminist theory, Acker’s use of philosophy, and her experimental writing practices.

From the Kathy Acker Papers

Dr. Donna Drucker, civil and environmental engineering, Technische Universität Darmstadt, for a journal article on sexual behavior and the science of contraceptive testing in the mid-twentieth century United States.

Sara Mameni, Ph.D. candidate, visual arts, University of California, San Diego, for dissertation research on Iran-US relations in the 1960s and 1970s—leading up to Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979—through the lens of queer theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial studies.

Ivy McIntyre, Ph.D. candidate, history, St. Louis University, for dissertation research on South Carolina families in times of personal crisis in the early Republic.

Andrew Pope, Ph.D. candidate, history, Harvard University, for dissertation research on radical social movements and the New South in Georgia from 1968-1996.

Dr. Jason Scott, Dr. Annalisa Castaldo, and Jennifer Lynn Pollitt, for an edited collection of essays looking at how kink identities, behaviors, and lifestyles are represented in popular and cultural studies.

Mairead Sullivan, Ph.D. candidate, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Emory University, for dissertation research on questions of breastedness in feminist and queer theory.

Hope Tucker, independent scholar, for an artist’s video on the fragility of reproductive rights in the American South, as seen through the work of those who documented and labored for these rights in the second half of the twentieth century.

Bingham Center, My Rubenstein Library, News and Features

My Rubenstein Library: Mary Ziegler on The Abortion Wars

With generous assistance from a 2013 Mary Lily Research Grant, I visited the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture last summer to do research for an article and for my book, now under contract with Harvard University Press, The Lost History of the Abortion Debate.

CARASA001resizedThe Bingham Center offers researchers access to many forgotten voices from the abortion wars, from pioneering feminists to founding members of the women’s health movement. I focused on materials documenting the policies and struggles of abortion providers in the years after Roe v. Wade. My search uncovered documents chronicling the work of individual clinics and the activities of political organizations, like the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, that lobby for those working in clinics. These documents revealed a complex legal discourse forged by lay actors—women, clinic staff, providers and activists seeking to redefine what abortion rights meant. Non-lawyers routinely interpreted Supreme Court decisions, using them as raw material for new visions of reproductive freedom.

The story told by the documents housed at the Bingham Center differs substantially from the conventional narrative of post-1973 abortion politics. We often believe that the Supreme Court set the course for the abortion wars of future decades. In particular, by defining abortion as a privacy issue, the Court supposedly short-circuited popular debate about what abortion rights ought to mean. The materials I found complicated this narrative. Far from leaving constitutional issues to the courts, providers, patients, and political activists drew on judicial decisions in creating bold, new ideas about the rights women deserved. The documents I found at the Bingham Center provide indispensable evidence of the true impact of Roe, since the Bingham collections recapture the often-neglected voices of abortion providers. We stand to learn a great deal from studying these materials. I certainly did.

Post contributed by Mary Ziegler, an assistant professor of law at Florida State University College of Law.

 

Bingham Center, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, Travel Grants

Congratulations to this year’s travel grant recipients!

The Rubenstein Library’s three research center annually award travel grants to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars through a competitive application process. Congratulations to this year’s recipients, we look forward to working with all of you!

 

John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture Travel Grant Recipients

Dr. Richard Bell, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park; Project: “Slavery’s Market: A Microhistory.”

Dr. Frederick Carroll, Instructor, Department of History, Norfolk State University; Project: “Race News: How Black Reporters and Readers Shaped the Fight for Racial Injustice, 1910-1978.”

Ms. Mandy Jolly, Undergraduate, Department of History, Lenoir-Ryhne University; Project: “Journalistic Racism from Early Travel/Exploration Logs from the 19th and 20th Century.”

Dr. Phillip Misevich, Assistant Professor of History, St. John’s University; Project: “On the Frontier of Freedom: Abolition and the Growth of Atlantic Commerce in Southern Sierra Leone, c1790s to 1880s.”

Ms. Marie Stango, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Michigan; Project: “Antislavery and Colonization: African American Women in Nineteenth Century West Africa.”

Dr. Shirley Thompson, Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies, University of Texas at Austin; Project: “No More Auction Block for Me: African Americans and the Problem of Property.”

Dr. Charlotte Walker-Said, Theodore W. Lentz Fellow in Peace Studies and Human Rights, Webster University; Project: “Traditional Marriage for the Modern Nation: Family Formation and the Politics of Religion in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa.”

Mr. James Wall, PhD Candidate, Department of History, University of Georgia; Project: “Redefining Success: The Strule for Freedom Rights in Southwest Georgia, 1945-1985”

 

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History Fellowship and Travel Grant Recipients

Zoe Sherman, a Hartman Center grantee, uses the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Records
Zoe Sherman uses the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Records

FOARE Fellowships for Outdoor Advertising Research:

Elizabeth Semler: History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Minnesota, “’Got Milk?’: Dairy Advertising and Scientific Authority in the late 20th Century”

Zoe Sherman: Economics, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, “The Commodification of Audience Attention in the US, 1865-1920”

 

John Furr Fellowships for JWT Research:

Ai Hisano: History, University of Delaware, “A History of Food Color in the United States, 1880s-1970s”

Cristina Sánchez-Blanco: Media Management, University of Navarra (Spain), “Advertising Account Planning in JWT”

Hartman Center Travel Grants:

Francesca Russello Ammon: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, “Culture of Clearance: Waging War on the Landscape in Postwar America”

Leslie Anderson: University of California – Merced, “The Politics of Domesticity” (Senior Thesis)

Mary Bridges: International Studies, Yale University, “Global Infrastructure of US Business Activities in the Interwar and World War II Periods”

Jessica Burch: History Department, Vanderbilt University, “Soap and Hope: culture, Capitalism, and Direct Sales in World War II America”

Dr. Andrew Case: Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin – Madison, “Dear Friend: Direct Mail Marketing and the Transformation of Buying and Selling in Postwar America”

Kristi Whitfield Johnson: Baton Rouge, LA, “Canning Foods and Selling Modernity: The Canned Food Industry and Consumer Culture, 1898-1945”

Dr. Richard K. Popp: Journalism, Advertising and Media Studies, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, “Direct Marketing, Communication Networks, and the Remaking of consumer Culture, 1960-2000”

 

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture Travel Grant Recipients

Valerie Behrer, English, University of Minnesota, for dissertation research on the connections between girls’ subjectivities, autobiographical practices, and the development of American radical feminism from the late 1960s to the 1970s.

Erin Leigh Durban-Albrecht, Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Arizona, for a set of related projects—including a film and her dissertation—that use Kathy Acker’s Kathy Goes to Haiti to explore racialized gender and sexuality, cultural production, and U.S.‐Haiti relations in the 20th and early 21st century.

Dr. Lauren Gutterman, Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, Columbia Law School, for a book that will examine the personal experiences and public representation of American wives who desired women, 1945 to 1979.

Monica Miller, English and Women’s & Gender Studies, Louisiana State University, for dissertation research on the use of ugly women as characters that defy the stereotype of the beautiful belle in the work of 20th century Southern women writers.

Michelle Pronovost, Fashion Institute of Technology, for research on the confrontational fashion of riot grrrls in zines from the 1990s.

Dr. Andrea Walton, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University Bloomington, for research supporting an article and book chapter on philanthropist Eleanor Thomas Elliott.

Kelly Weber, History, Rice University, for dissertation research related to the politics of daughterhood in the New South, 1880 to 1920.

Stacy J. Williams, Sociology, University of California, San Diego, for dissertation research on how social movements have affected feminist discourse about cooking, 1874 to 2013.

Dr. Mary Ziegler, St. Louis University, for a book about how abortion providers helped define lay understandings of the constitutional, statutory, and common law concerning abortion in the United States.

 

Eleanore and Harold Jantz Fellowship

The first recipient of the Eleanore and Harold Jantz Fellowship is Chunjie Zhang, Assistant Professor of German at the University of California, Davis.  Dr. Zhang is a graduate of Duke (PhD 2010). Her project is “Representations of non-European cultures in the German discourse in the eighteenth century.”

Bingham Center, Do Your Research, Franklin Research Center, Hartman Center, News and Features, Travel Grants

Come Visit! We’re Now Taking Applications for Travel Grants

Researchers! The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library is now accepting applications for our 2013-2014 travel grants.

The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture, the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture, and the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History will award up to $1,000 per recipient to fund travel and other expenses related to visiting the Rubenstein Library.

The grants are open to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, independent scholars, artists, and activists who live more than 100 miles from Durham, NC and whose research projects would benefit from access to collections held by one of the centers.

More details—and the grant application—may be found on our grants website. Applications must be postmarked or e-mailed no later than 5:00 PM EST on March 29, 2013. Recipients will be announced in April 2013.

NC Travel Billboard, "Only a Day's Drive," undated. From the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archives.
NC Travel Billboard, “Only a Day’s Drive,” undated. From the Outdoor Advertising Association of America Archives.

Some of last year’s recipients include:

At the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture:

  • Bridget Collins, a graduate student in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, used prescriptive literature held by the Bingham Center as part of her research for her dissertation, “From the Cradle to the Grave: Infectious Disease in the Twentieth Century American Home.”
  • Laura Foxworth, a graduate student in the Department of History at the University of South Carolina, for research for her dissertation, “The Spiritual is Political: How the Southern Baptist Convention Debated Feminism and Found the New Right.” You can read more about her visit here.
  • Jessica Lancia, a graduate student at the University of Florida, conducted research for her dissertation, “Borderless Feminisms: A Transnational History of the U.S. Women’s Movement, 1967-1985.” You can read more about her visit in the Fall 2012 issue of the Bingham Center newsletter.

At the John Hope Franklin Research Center for African and African American History and Culture:

  • Brooke N. Newman, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Virginia Commonwealth University, for a study on gender, race, and power in the eighteenth century British Caribbean.
  • Kathryn Banks, Assistant Professor in the History and Political Science Department at Andrews University, for an examination of African-American employment in the Southern textile industry from 1895 to 1945.
  • Max L. Grivno, Associate Professor from the Department of History at the University of Southern Mississippi, for an analysis of slavery in Mississippi, 1690-1865.

At the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History:

  • Anne Schmidt of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, for research for her book about the meaning and importance of emotions in advertising throughout the twentieth century in Germany and ways emotions were a constitutive element of capitalist practices of production and consumption.
  • Marcia Chatelain, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Georgetown University, conducted research on the ways in which segregation shaped African-American food culture in the South for her book, A Taste of Freedom: African-American Dining Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
  • Rochelle Pereira-Alvares, a graduate student in the Department of History at the University of Guelph, Canada, exploring how the marketing and advertising initiatives of Hiram Walker and Seagram influenced the way in which consumers purchased and imbibed spirits, and the impact consumers’ changing tastes had on the companies’ marketing and product development decisions, 1950-1990.
  • Bryce C. Lowery, a graduate student in Public Policy at the University of Southern California, for research for his dissertation, “The Consumable Landscapes of Los Angeles: How the Spatial Ecology of Outdoor Advertising Influences the Quality of Life.”

Post contributed by Stephanie Barnwell, Bingham Center intern.