{"id":272,"date":"2012-04-18T19:40:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T19:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/?p=272"},"modified":"2021-01-18T13:59:09","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T19:59:09","slug":"re-examining-the-pelvic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/2012\/04\/18\/re-examining-the-pelvic\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-examining the Pelvic"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, May 1st, the Iowa Women’s Archives will host a lecture by Wendy Kline, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.  Kline’s talk, “Reexamining the Pelvic: Women\u2019s Health from a Recent Historical Perspective,” concerns the late 20th century controversy regarding pelvic examination instruction in American medical schools.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Wendy Kline<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the 1970s, medical educators expressed concern over how best to prepare medical students for routine gynecological care.  In response, schools experimented with a variety of approaches, including the use of plastic models, anesthetized patients, volunteers, and \u201csimulated\u201d patients (including prostitutes, graduate students, and nurses).  By the late 1970s, outsiders entered the debate, as female medical students, consumer rights advocates, and health feminists criticized some of these tactics as demeaning and destructive to women.  Approached by female students at Harvard Medical School disappointed by their gynecological training, the Women\u2019s Community Health Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts initiated an innovative \u201cpelvic teaching program.\u201d  Laywomen acted as instructors and patient models for Harvard Medical students during a required introductory clinical medicine course.  But after two years, the partnership disintegrated, with feminists feeling like no more than \u201ctalking pelvises\u201d and medical educators disturbed by feminist politics, personal crusades, and \u201cinappropriate patient model choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing on the unpublished papers of the Women\u2019s Community Health Center, medical journals, memoirs, and oral histories, Kline argues that this initial attempt to overhaul the traditional power relations between doctor and female patient, although unsuccessful, marked a crucial development in the negotiations between feminist health clinics, medical students, and organized medicine.  Ultimately, this controversy helped to transform routine gynecological care by challenging many of the assumptions about how to understand and examine the female body.<\/p>\n

LECTURE AND RECEPTION<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Tuesday, May 1st, 4:00 p.m. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Iowa Women\u2019s Archives<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

3rd Floor, Main Library <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 The University of Iowa<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, May 1st, the Iowa Women’s Archives will host a lecture by Wendy Kline, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.  Kline’s talk, “Reexamining the Pelvic: Women\u2019s Health from a Recent Historical Perspective,” concerns the late 20th century controversy regarding pelvic examination instruction in American medical schools. In the 1970s, medical educators expressed concern overContinue reading “Re-examining the Pelvic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[38,349],"syndication":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2051,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/2051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}