Dr. Elisabeth M. Yang will explore the medicalization and transformation of the home nursery at the turn of the 20th century.
Directions for constructing and setting up home nurseries were a common feature of child-rearing and domestic medicine manuals, during the mid-to late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this talk, Dr. Elisabeth M. Yang will discuss how the home nursery itself was medicalized and transformed into a sanctified space of science, technology, religion, and politics, as physicians and child-rearing authorities proscribed objects as implements of “moralizing” and “normalizing” the infant. She will explore what the material world of babies—the nursery and its objects—reveals to us about their moral nature and agency, suggesting an intimate link between the physical topology of babyhood and the moral ontology of babies. The talk will address theoretical entanglements between the material and moral in the making of the idealized “healthy and happy” American baby in the home nursery which emerged as an ideological concourse of various babyhoods—mechanistic, plant-like, savage, tyrannical, innocent, and patriotic.
Free event – please RSVP online via Eventbrite.
2022/10/27 - 2022/10/27
Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at The University of Akron
73 S. College Street, Akron, OH 44325
Free parking is available in the lot directly adjacent to the building. This lot contains a dedicated accessible parking spot near the museum entrance.
Free parking is also available in Lot 30 at the corner of College and Market streets, which contains several accessible parking spaces.
Metered parking is available along South College Street. Pavement from Lot 30 and metered parking may be uneven, and people with limited mobility should exercise caution.