The Center for Women & Society is very excited to host Deirdre Cooper Owens (Queens College) for a book salon event. Cooper Owens will be discussing her book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, in conversation with Jennifer Morgan (NYU) and Sasha Turner Bryson (Quinnipiac University).

This event will take place on February 14, 2018, from 6:30-8:00 PM, in the Skylight Room.

Deirdre Cooper Owens wrote Medical Bondage:  Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology to reveal the historical connections of slavery to the development of professional American women’s medicine. She explores how concepts like blackness, health, and biological sameness and difference were shifting as well as being defined by white medical men intent on advancing their careers and “fixing” women’s ailments.  As some doctors repaired so-called broken bodies, categories that confined black women to only being thought of as strong were cemented in antebellum medical thought and practice. Cooper Owens is an Assistant Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY.