Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Race, Sexuality, and the "Progressive Physician": African American Doctors, Eugenics, and Public Health, 1900-1940(2014) Nuriddin, Ayah; Michel, Sonya A; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis will examine how African American doctors interpreted eugenic thought in the early twentieth century. African American doctors embraced eugenics for its potential to improve the health of their race, thus bringing about a kind of "biological racial uplift." African American doctors thus drew on their discipline to pursue a form of eugenic activism that had internal and external ramifications for the race. . Even though African Americans faced medical injustice, they were not simply the victims of eugenics and scientific racism. They were also critics and proponents of eugenics. The first chapter will address how eugenics shaped African American discussions of public health, and how eugenic ideas about sex and sexuality influenced their discourse and understanding of venereal disease. The second chapter will examine how African American doctors discussed birth control, compulsory sterilization, and abortion within the context of racial uplift.Item Reason and Faith: A Study of Interwar Chilean Eugenic Discourse, 1900-1950(2013) Walsh, Sarah; Rosemblatt, Karin A; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how social reform discourse that rationalized gender difference allowed Chilean Catholics to play a critical role in the development of eugenic science between 1900 and 1950. Building on scholarship relating to the development of a modernized, patriarchal system during the 1920s and 1930s and the rise of eugenics among scientists during the same period, this dissertation posits that eugenic science in Chile was the result of a complex interaction between Catholic and secular intellectuals vying for dominance in the reconstruction of the modern Chilean social order. Political liberals characterized the Catholic Church as a dogmatic monolith that was antithetical to social progressivism and disconnected from the realities of modern life. At the same time, Chilean Catholics used the social disruptions caused by capitalist industrialization to assert their social, moral, and scientific superiority. The dissertation asserts that anti-clerical discourse popular among progressive actors served to obscure the scientific and social contributions, both conservative and progressive, of the Catholic Church and its supporters in Chile. Each chapter in this dissertation examines how Catholics responded to secular efforts to oust them from their traditional places of social influence - hospitals, orphanages, schools, charities, and family life - through the application of eugenic science. Secular reformers contrasted their own presumably rational, scientific responses to social problems while feminizing religious practice and Church or Catholic perspectives. Chilean Catholics responded by asserting the compatibility of science and religion, particularly in the field of eugenics. Catholic scholars suggested, for instance, that they had to be involved in eugenic practices to ensure the most ethical application of scientific principles.Item Creating a Space in the Medical Profession: Female Physicians, Maternalism, and Eugenics Work in Weimar and Nazi Germany(2011) Kravetz, Melissa; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the history of female physicians' work in marriage counseling centers, in school health reform, and in the movements against alcoholism, venereal disease, and prostitution during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), and in organizations like the Bund Deutscher Mädels (League of German Girls; BDM) and the Reichsmütterdienst (Reich Mothers' Service), as well as their efforts in the racial hygiene and anti-tobacco campaigns during the Third Reich (1933-1945). In this study, I ask how and why women occupied particular fields within the medical profession in these years, and how women doctors reconciled their medical perspectives with their views of the Weimar and later the Nazi state. Focusing primarily on those women doctors who were members of the Bund Deutscher Ärztinnen (League of German Female Physicians, BDÄ), this dissertation demonstrates that female physicians used primarily maternalist and to a lesser extent eugenic arguments to make a case for their presence in these medical spaces. This dissertation draws primarily on women doctors' own interpretations of their work in the organization's journal, Die Ärztin (The Female Physician), and also utilizes the publications, personal papers, and memoirs of professionally and politically active members of the BDÄ. Female physicians argued that they could best serve the Weimar medical profession because the caring and nurturing nature of their work was an extension of their domestic responsibilities. Additionally, they claimed to fit well with Nazi ideology because they were dedicated to motherhood and to preserving the Volksgesundheit (people's health) and creating the Volksgemeinschaft (people's community). I argue that supporting women's traditional societal roles as well as eugenics discourse were means by which female physicians advanced in the male-dominated medical profession. By working in marginalized spaces (which they helped to create) where they treated only women and children, they shielded themselves from male doctors' attention, thereby enhancing their own autonomy and their authority in women's and children's medicine. I show that by advocating eugenics and accentuating their feminine and motherly qualities, women were able to secure jobs and even broaden their medical roles to become political and educational advocates for women in an otherwise hostile work environment.