A Rhetorical History of Women Shaping the Trajectory of Fertility Science, 1870-1970

FAIN: FEL-267498-20

Robin E. Jensen
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9049)

Research and writing leading to a book on the rhetorical practices of three American women involved in the study of fertility.

This rhetorical history project analyzes the scientific, public, and interpersonal communication of three women who were central to the development and implementation of fertility science as it is known today. Reformer Julia Ward Howe, psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch, and gynecologist Sophia Kleegman communicated from different social locations and time periods to push back against—and contribute to—scientific orthodoxy. I contend that the fissures they created in scholarly and mainstream discourses about reproductive health functioned to expand the scope of infertility diagnosis and treatment regimens, and to loosen long-held clinical beliefs about women as the central players in fertility related ills. This analysis identifies the discursive strategies that these actors employed to intervene in fertility studies and demonstrates how interventions in science often unfold not in terms of revolutions but in terms of multimodal, nonlinear, and longitudinal communicative negotiations.

Associated Products

Re-envisioning the reproductive body in fertility science: From invasive gynecology to a ‘conservative surgery’ hermeneutic. (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Re-envisioning the reproductive body in fertility science: From invasive gynecology to a ‘conservative surgery’ hermeneutic.
Author: Robin E. Jensen
Abstract: This essay explores the discursive means by which ingrained trajectories of medical knowledge and practice have been re-envisioned and recalibrated in U.S. history. It takes for its case study the development of the field of fertility science and medicine, which is an outgrowth of Dr. J. Marion Sims’s notorious, nineteenth-century gynecological tradition of invasive and injurious surgeries targeting the female body. More specifically, this essay offers a critical-comparative analysis of Sims’s mid-to-late-nineteenth-century medical publications and Dr. Sophia Kleegman’s mid-twentieth-century medical publications to highlight the differing pedagogies of sight at work therein. The analysis reveals that—in contrast to the objectivist, myopic, and exclusively female-focused visual pedagogy that Sims articulated—Kleegman’s pedagogy provided disciplinary readers with a distinct, “conservative surgery” hermeneutic for scientific study and treatment that illuminated new diagnostic heuristics related to the proximity of pain, the scale of efficiency, and the boundaries of corporality and expertise. In this way, Kleegman’s articles instantiated an alternative disciplinary optics that balanced past ways of seeing with emergent, ethically calibrated modes of clinical judgement. Ultimately, this technical intervention into medical vision facilitated the realization of increasingly humane and effective practices across reproductive medicine and fertility science beginning in the mid-to-late-twentieth century.
Date: 05/25/2021
Conference Name: International Communication Association

Humanities Radio: Dr. Sophia Kleegman (Film/TV/Video Broadcast or Recording)
Title: Humanities Radio: Dr. Sophia Kleegman
Writer: Robin E. Jensen
Director: Jana Cunningham
Producer: University of Utah College of Humanities
Abstract: In celebration of Women’s History Month, Robin Jensen, professor of communication, discusses her research on Sophia Kleegman. Relatively unknown, Kleegman was the first woman appointed to the New York University College of Medicine faculty of obstetrics and gynecology in 1929 and was a pioneer in fertility medicine. Her patient-centric approach and controversial views helped change the way the medical community approached reproductive health.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://humanities.utah.edu/humanitiesradio/season3.php
Access Model: Open Access
Format: Digital File
Format: Web

Re-envisioning fertility science: From J. Marion Sims's invasive gynecology to Sophia Kleegman's "conservative surgery" hermeneutic (Article)
Title: Re-envisioning fertility science: From J. Marion Sims's invasive gynecology to Sophia Kleegman's "conservative surgery" hermeneutic
Author: Robin E. Jensen
Abstract: This essay explores the discursive means by which ingrained trajectories of medical knowledge and practice have been re-envisioned and recalibrated in U.S. history. It takes for its case study the development of the field of fertility science and medicine, which is an outgrowth of Dr. J. Marion Sims’s notorious, nineteenth-century gynecological tradition of invasive and injurious surgeries targeting the female body. More specifically, this essay offers a critical-comparative analysis of Sims’s mid-to-late-nineteenth-century medical publications and Dr. Sophia Kleegman’s mid-twentieth-century medical publications to highlight the differing pedagogies of sight at work therein. The analysis reveals that—in contrast to the objectivist, myopic, and exclusively female-focused visual pedagogy that Sims articulated—Kleegman’s pedagogy provided disciplinary readers with a distinct, “conservative surgery” hermeneutic for scientific study and treatment that illuminated new diagnostic heuristics related to the proximity of pain, the scale of efficiency, and the boundaries of corporality and expertise. In this way, Kleegman’s articles instantiated an alternative disciplinary optics that balanced past ways of seeing with emergent, ethically calibrated modes of clinical judgement. Ultimately, this technical intervention into medical vision facilitated the realization of increasingly humane and effective practices across reproductive medicine and fertility science beginning in the mid-to-late-twentieth century.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2053565
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Quarterly Journal of Speech
Publisher: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group

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