Thesis ID: CBB001562131

Making the American Mouth: Dental Professionalization, Dental Public Health, and the Construction of Identity in the 20th Century United States (2004)

unapi

Picard, Alyssa (Author)


University of Michigan
Pernick, Martin S.


Publication Date: 2004
Edition Details: Advisor: Pernick, Martin S.
Physical Details: 369 pp.
Language: English

The professionalization of dentistry in the 20 th century United States was linked to changing constructions of what standards of dentistry and dental appearance were "American." In turn, debates about oral health care constituted an important site for the construction of national identity. This dissertation treats American dentists' professional writings as a body of cultural history source material, examining them for evidence of how dentists participated in the construction of professional, national, and other identities in the twentieth century. Where possible, I also elucidate patients' responses to dentists' concepts of appropriate patient and citizenship behaviors. In the early 20 th century, American dentists used travel writing to represent "American dentistry" as entailing uniquely high levels of skill, intellect, and scientific savvy. However, in their discussions of the "American diet," dentists debated with considerable anxiety what it meant to be "American," and whether that was good or bad for oral health. Dentists' shifting professional and entrepreneurial interests also shaped their ideas about the delivery of dental care--particularly the provision of public funding for dental public health measures, including public school dental hygiene programs and the fluoridation of public water supplies. By the end of the twentieth century, pressures from within and outside the profession left dentists increasingly suspicious of public health programs they had previously supported. In response, they developed and expanded treatment measures (such as orthodonture) that required long-term time and financial commitments on the part of the individual patient. By the end of the twentieth century, "good citizenship," to most dentists, came to mean the promotion of private practice, and opposition to publicly-funded health programs (and to most dental insurance). Increasingly, good citizenship was marked in patients' mouths by evidence that they had obtained costly esthetic dental interventions: absence of these markers was often attributed to lack of individual ambition, or to an inappropriately low valuation of personal appearance and its role in business and social life.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/02 (2004): 667. UMI pub. no. 3122024.


Citation URI
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Authors & Contributors
Chernin, David A.
Lisa A. Bitterich
Fromherz, Ariane
Brinkman, Joshua T.
Formicola, Allan J.
Abrams, Ellen
Concepts
Dentistry
Professions and professionalization
Public health
Medicine
Medical education and teaching
Identity
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Germany
Turkey
Switzerland
Pennsylvania (U.S.)
Florida (U.S.)
Institutions
Columbia University College of Dental Medicine
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