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Medical Bondage

by Deirdre Cooper Owens M.D.

  • University of Georgia Press
  • 2021
  • ISBN: 978-0820351346
  • 182 pages
  • WorldCat
Medical Bondage book cover
About the Book

In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white “ladies.” Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors were legitimizing, for decades to come, groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities. ebook icon Audio book icon
Deirdre Cooper Owens MD
About the Author

Deirdre Cooper Owens, an award-winning historian and popular public speaker, is the Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In this position, Dr. Cooper Owens is one of two Black women in the U.S. running a medical humanities program. She earned her Ph.D. in history at UCLA and has had a number of prestigious fellowships at the University of Virginia, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and as a Big Ten Academic Leadership Fellow. Dr. Cooper Owens is also the Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731. As one of the country's most "acclaimed experts in U.S. history," according to Time Magazine, Cooper Owens is steadily working towards making history more accessible and inspiring for all.

Official website of Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens

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last updated: 12/16/25 09:35