Colonizing Health: Gender and the Politics of Reproductive Healthcare in British Mandate Palestine and Colonial Sudan 1921-54

FAIN: FT-290685-23

Elizabeth Brownson
University of Wisconsin, Parkside (Kenosha, WI 53144-1133)

Research at Durham University’s Sudan Archive and writing an article analyzing midwifery and health policies affecting women in Mandate Palestine and Colonial Sudan. The arrival of western medicine in the colonized world brought new male authority and restrictions over women’s health and bodies. Lessons from colonial health policy could inform today’s struggles over women’s access to reproductive care. Also, my students are most interested in studies that explore the lives of nonelites and women, but we have few on Palestine or Sudan from this era. My project fills this gap by examining the impact of colonial medicine on women’s health care and gender constructs in Palestine and Sudan under British rule. I will analyze midwifery courses, legislation, and regulations that reshaped midwives’ work, as well as their responses. My project will contribute to scholarship on social history, the Middle East, gender and empire, colonial medicine, and Palestinian and Sudanese women’s studies.