Hill, Jennifer J. Birthing the West: Mothers and Midwives in the Rockies and Plains. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2022. “Birthing the West” is the title of Jennifer J. Hill’s study of reproduction in the American Northwest from the mid-nineteenth century to about 1940. She uses oral histories, diaries, correspondence, and state health department…
Author: Emilie Egger
Dr. Emilie Egger is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science at the Yale School of Public Health. She holds PhDs in public health and the history of medicine. Her research focuses on reproductive health, maternal-child health, and health policy implementation. Her book project, Diminished Citizenship: Reproductive Sovereignty in Historical Memory and Health Data in Peru, 1995-2006 focuses on how reproductive violence is built into historical archives and public health data.
Brief reflections on forging a career in humanities & health
//emilieegger This journal is a deep repository of reflections on living the health-humanities: as providers, scholars, thinkers, and recipients of health care. I’d like to add to this conversation with thoughts on what it has looked like for me to forge a career that centers the humanities in the questions of health care. More than…
Book review: Engendering Islands by Ashley M. Williard
Emilie Egger // Williard, Ashley M. Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2021. Many of the sources for Ashley M. Williard’s literary analysis in Engendering Islands exist in fragments. Williard’s examination of the sparse and partial traveler’s journals, religious documents, and letters that remain from…
Update: “Essential Oils and White Motherhood”
Emilie Egger// In September 2018, I wrote my first piece for Synapsis. My article was about essential oils and constructions of white motherhood, how essential oils are a multifaceted part of the post-feminist discourse that highlights sexual difference and the power of domesticity in producing a white, heterosexual future. I also briefly discussed companies’ focus…
Risk for medical violence should be considered in COVID-19 vaccine rollout
Emilie Egger // As the effort to vaccinate Americans against COVID-19 begins, states, scholars, and editorial boards continue to deliberate as to who should receive available supply first. Most conversations coalesce around the “most vulnerable” with a few main definitions of who that includes. The earliest definitions of “at risk” centered on the elderly, residents…
Reproductive politics everywhere: review of Reproduction on the Reservation by Brianna Theobald
Emilie Egger // Of her archival research process for her 2019 monograph Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century, historian Brianna Theobald writes that she “never knew where biological reproduction would pop up in the historical record or what would emerge as important context” (14). This realization holds the…
Who Qualifies for Patient Care During COVID-19?
Emilie Egger // During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care routines have shifted dramatically. Ill patients are dying without their loved ones and few patients are allowed advocates in hospitals or doctor’s offices; COVID patients are allowed none. Less dramatic but still significant: primary care has been moved online and elective procedures postponed indefinitely. The crisis…
Listening to patients: learning from sobreparto
Emilie Egger // Imagine calling to check up on a friend who has recently given birth. Five weeks postpartum, she tells you she barely has the energy to get out of bed to take care of her baby. Because her family had moved to a new city for work—away from her support system—her partner couldn’t…
Five Decades of “Semiotic” Fetal Imagery in the US: Part 2
This is the second of two articles on the history fetal imagery in the United States. The first post can be found here. The conflation of fetal rights and human rights extended into the 1990s and continued to obscure the rights of pregnant people. Liberals assembled around the rhetoric of “safe, legal, rare” to accommodate…
Five Decades of “Semiotic” Fetal Imagery in the US: Part 1
Emilie Egger // In July 2019, Dr. Leana Wen resigned from her post as president of Planned Parenthood, citing philosophical differences with her former employer. In an op-ed published in The New York Times published days after her resignation, she summarized their differences as medicine versus politics. “I have long believed that the most effective…