Gurtler, Bridget E. (Author)
The dissertation examines the development of assisted reproduction in American medicine and culture between the first reported use of artificial insemination in the late eighteenth century and the birth of the modern cryobanking industry at the end of the twentieth century. It focuses on artificial insemination, the first "assisted reproductive" technology, in a wide range of historical contexts--eighteenth century gynecological practices, nineteenth century clinics, early twentieth century eugenics movements, post World War II veterans hospitals, and the first fertility clinics to offer cryopreservation services in the late twentieth century. Tracing the evolution of technology in such varied medical and social arenas reveals that its research and practice expanded in moments of moral, sexual, and family panic - in the wake of wars, demographic upheaval, and national uncertainty. It also establishes that concerns about marriage, hereditary health, patient privacy, and the connection between social and biological relatedness were concerns for actors across eras as they intervened in reproductive sex as was the perception that medical science offered new technological solutions to infertility. Finally, in contrast to contemporary scholarly arguments that privilege in vitro fertilization and the birth control pill the project shows that by transferring intimate acts of conception into physician's offices artificial insemination made critical contributions to the medicalization and consumerization of reproduction. Using the history of artificial insemination as a lens this project speaks to scholarship on reproduction by offering an analysis of how gender, race, and sexuality influenced the growth of a medical market in fertility and the ability to regulate it. Following the gendered politics of science and reproduction as they manifest in this unique, albeit low-tech, technology this dissertation contributes to the history of reproductive science by tracing the developing contours of the scientific study of sperm. Doing so not only enables the insertion of men's reproductive bodies into the history of reproduction and its technologies but also provides a window into the collaborations between industrial chemistry, experimental biology, and reproductive medicine as they sought to safely freeze, store, and thaw human and animal sperm. Finally, the dissertation provides critical insights into the changing understandings and technological transformations of modern families. Analyzing controversies over AI in popular, bio-medical, and political spheres demonstrates that the control of conception was an important locus by which authorities and individuals understood what made a family, while also revealing the remarkable fluidity of the concept of "family" throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/12(E), Jun 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1442193393.
Thesis
Harris, Lisa Hope;
(2006)
Challenging Conception: A Clinical and Cultural History of in vitro Fertilization in the United States
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Pursell, Carroll W.;
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Companion to American technology
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Heidi Katherine Knoblauch;
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Patients' Posture: Medical Photography, Collecting, and Privacy, 1862-1962
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Emin-Tunc, Tanfer;
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Technologies of Choice: A History of Abortion Techniques in the United States, 1850--1980
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Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory;
Longino, Helen E.;
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Body Talk: Rhetoric, Technology, Reproduction
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Schreiber, Christine;
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Natürlich künstliche Befruchtung? Eine Geschichte der In-vitro-Fertilisation von 1878 bis 1950
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Tousignant, Noemi R.;
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Vostral, Sharra Louise;
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Under Wraps: A History of Menstrual Hygiene Technology
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Travis, Anthony S.;
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Preface: 150 Years of the Coal-Tar Dye Industry, 1856--2006
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Engines of War: How Wars Were Won and Lost on the Railways
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Evolution Made to Order: Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America
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Michelle Murphy;
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The Economization of Life
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The Clot Stopper
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The New Surgical Amphitheater: Color Television and Medical Education in Postwar America
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Boundaries and Border Wars: DES, Technology, and Environmental Justice
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Dawson, M. Joan;
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Paul Lauterbur and the Invention of MRI
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Robin E. Jensen;
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Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term
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