| FA-251827-17 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | Febe Dalipe Pamonag | Patients’ Activism in the Culion Leper Colony, Philippines, 1905-1930s | 1/1/2017 - 12/31/2017 | $50,400.00 | Febe | Dalipe | Pamonag | | | | Western Illinois University | Macomb | IL | 61455-1390 | USA | 2016 | History, Other | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 50400 | 0 | 50400 | 0 | A book about patient activism at a U.S.-managed leper colony in the Phillipines (1905-1930s).
This project will advance our understanding of Filipino leprosy patients’ engagement with American colonial officials; this is an understudied theme in the literature on empire and public health policy and U.S. occupation of the Philippines. In 1905, American health authorities established a leper colony in Culion, an isolated island in Palawan. Suspected lepers were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to Culion. Most scholarship on Culion highlights its role as a laboratory for civic experimentation and how it was embroiled in major political issues of the day. In this project, I consider the views and practices of leprosy patients to show their resistance, as well as adaptation and accommodation of certain regulations in order to improve their lives on the island. This project also addresses such issues as the criminalization of disease and the degree to which individual rights may be compromised in the name of public health, all of which have contemporary resonance. |