The Conseula Francis Emerging Scholar Lecture Series was established to support the scholarship of junior faculty in the field of African American Studies across the country. On Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 6:00 pm, Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens will deliver a lecture on her new book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, for this lecture series. Cooper Owens is an assistant professor of History at Queens College in New York, and her book explores how pioneers in gynecology experimented on enslaved women and Irish immigrant women to develop a field that simultaneously produced medical advances and lent legitimacy to pseudo-scientific white supremacist and sexist theories. Her work not only recovers the voices of enslaved women who shaped these medical advances but also has implications for understanding contemporary distrust of the medical field on the part of many African American women.

Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens
“Medical Bondage: How Slavery Advanced American Gynecology”
Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at 6:00 pm in Addlestone Library Room 227

This lecture is sponsored by the African American Studies Program with additional support from the Avery Research Center, English Department, History Department, Public Health Program, Waring Historical Library (MUSC), and Women’s and Gender Studies Program.