WRITING PROMPT: In the afterward found in Medical Bondage, African-American hist
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WRITING PROMPT:
In the afterward found in Medical Bondage, African-American historian Deirdre Cooper Owens
describes a personal encounter with a physician who appeared indifferent to her physical
suffering during a painful medical procedure. She observed, “It seemed that I could not escape
James Marion Sims’s historical gaze but also the lessons he left for doctors who worked on the
descendants of the original American “mothers of gynecology,” held in bondage.” She continues,
“What my work as a historian of race, slavery, medicine, and gender has taught me is that the
legacies from the nineteenth century are always present in our lives as Americans.” Cooper
Owens argues that what happened to Anarcha, Betsy and Lucy, the enslaved women Sims
experimented on, was directly related to her own experiences as a Black woman.
What does Cooper Owens mean by this? What connections do you observe between the
historical case of Sims’s experiments and the assumptions that Sims made about these
women and their bodies, and present day medical racism?
Your answer should contain an argument backed by evidence. This is a short paper, so the best
strategy would be to make your case clearly and succinctly, and provide select examples (you
can’t cover every relevant illustration in your essay). Choose the best examples that illustrate
your point(s).
This paper is meant to be an exercise in analytical and critical thinking. It is NOT a research
paper, so no additional reading, outside of the assigned text, is required or expected. In fact, you
are not permitted to consult any outside sources. A breach of this requirement constitutes a
violation of academic integrity and is subject to the university and college policies overseeing
student dishonesty. The only source you may consult for this assignment is MEDICAL
BONDAGE: RACE, GENDER, AND THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN GYNECOLOGY by
Deirdre Cooper
