American Lobotomy studies a wide variety of representations of lobotomy to offer a rhetorical history of one of the most infamous procedures in the history of medicine. The development of lobotomy in 1935 was heralded as a “miracle cure” that would empty the nation’s perennially blighted asylums. However, only twenty years later, lobotomists initially praised for their “therapeutic courage” were condemned for their barbarity, an image that has only soured in subsequent decades. Johnson employs previously abandoned texts like science fiction, horror film, political polemics, and conspiracy theory to show how lobotomy’s entanglement with social and political narratives contributed to a powerful image of the operation that persists to this day. The book provocatively challenges the history of medicine, arguing that rhetorical history is crucial to understanding medical history. It offers a case study of how medicine accumulates meaning as it circulates in public culture and argues for the need to understand biomedicine as a culturally situated practice.
...MoreReview David R. Gruber (2016) Review of "American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History". Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology (pp. 263-265).
Thesis
Johnson, Jenell M.;
(2008)
Echoes of the Soul: A Rhetorical History of Lobotomy
(/isis/citation/CBB001561138/)
Chapter
Allison C. Carey;
(2014)
Parents and Professionals: Parents' Reflections on Professionals, the Support System, and the Family in the Twentieth-Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB462043764/)
Book
Burnham, John Chynoweth;
(2015)
Health Care in America: A History
(/isis/citation/CBB001422615/)
Chapter
Stephen Pemberton;
(2014)
The Curious Case of the "Professional Hemophiliac": Medicine, Disability, and the Contested Value of Normality in the United States, 1940-2010
(/isis/citation/CBB459166908/)
Book
Sarah Fawn Montgomery;
(2018)
Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir
(/isis/citation/CBB129442531/)
Article
Raz, Mical;
(2010)
Psychosurgery, Industry and Personal Responsibility, 1940--1965
(/isis/citation/CBB000932835/)
Book
Reagan, Leslie J.;
(2010)
Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB001023264/)
Book
Raz, Mical;
(2013)
The Lobotomy Letters: The Making of American Psychosurgery
(/isis/citation/CBB001214411/)
Chapter
Daniel Blacke;
(2014)
Disability, Dependency, and the Family in the Early United States
(/isis/citation/CBB020725953/)
Chapter
Kim E. Nielsen;
(2014)
Property, Disability, and the Making of the Incompetent Citizen in the United States, 1860s-1940s
(/isis/citation/CBB093838027/)
Chapter
Audra Jennings;
(2014)
Engendering and Regendering Disability: Gender and Disability Activism in Postwar America
(/isis/citation/CBB080082997/)
Chapter
Paul R. Lawrie;
(2014)
"Salvaging the Negro": Race, Rehabilitation, and the Body Politic in World War I America, 1917-1924
(/isis/citation/CBB792394956/)
Chapter
John M. Kinder;
(2014)
"Lest We Forget": Disabled Veterans and the Politics of War Remembrance in the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB468970898/)
Thesis
Linker, Beth;
(2006)
For Life and Limb: The Reconstruction of a Nation and Its Disabled Soldiers inWorld War I America
(/isis/citation/CBB001561626/)
Chapter
Susan K. Cahn;
(2014)
Border Disorders: Mental Illness, Feminist Metaphor, and the Disordered Female Psyche in the Twentieth-Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB605903648/)
Book
E. M. Jones;
E. M. Tansey;
(2015)
The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine C.1960 - C.2000: The Transcipt of a Witness Seminar Held by the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group, Queen Mary, University
(/isis/citation/CBB944102536/)
Thesis
Evan P. Sullivan;
(2020)
Making Good: World War I, Disability, and the Senses in American Rehabilitation
(/isis/citation/CBB655397421/)
Article
Beth Linker;
Whitney Laemmli;
(2015)
Half a Man: The Symbolism and Science of Paraplegic Impotence in World War II America
(/isis/citation/CBB496362783/)
Thesis
Shuko Tamao;
(2020)
Memories of Asylums: A Narrative Examination of Postwar State Hospital Experiences
(/isis/citation/CBB741533565/)
Article
Mills, Mara;
(2008)
Another Etymology for “Bionic”: Hearing Aids and Disability History at Kent State
(/isis/citation/CBB001021169/)
Be the first to comment!