Louis Pasteur's Butterflies: The Role of the “Sericicultrices” in the Metamorphosis of a Nineteenth-Century Germ Theory (2013)
Weiss, Kim Morrison (Author)
University of California, Irvine
Farmer, Sarah
Edition Details: Advisor: Farmer, Sarah
Physical Details: 301 pp.
Language: English
Prevailing gendered histories of science tend to focus on women's physical and intellectual absence from research laboratories and industries, journals and notebooks. While such questions of women's access and exclusion remain highly important, my study reconsiders intersections of gender and science in a context beyond accredited institutions and published records. In doing so, this research advances current understanding of how cultural roles of gender have shaped the methods, structure and meaning of science itself. My approach analyzes the relatively unexplored scientific notebooks of the scientist Louis Pasteur during his study of the silkworm diseases in the south of France (1865 to 1870). I show how Pasteur, in critical health, depended upon the expertise of séricicultrices --a community of local peasant women who raised silkworms (referred to as an éducation ) to perform crucial experiments, organize labor and teach his methods. This study establishes in what ways and to what extent the gendered observations made by the séricicultrices, their training in the éducation of the silkworm and later, the microscope influenced the content and dissemination of Pasteurian science. In light of this finding, I argue that the local credibility of the séricicultrices as highly skilled observers and effective communicators made them invaluable scientific intermediaries. Many women utilized their acquired role to reorient the very institutions that had limited their access, virtually metamorphosing into "Pasteur's butterflies"--moving beyond farms and silkworms to participate in the complementary fields of public health, education, medicine, and science. Expanding the perspective of gender in observation and experiment, Pasteur's Butterflies sheds light on the unacknowledged but crucial example of women transcending invisibility in the history of science.
...MoreDescription Explores issues in gender and science by looking at women who helped Pasteur in his study of silkworm diseases. Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. . ProQuest Doc. ID 1336047725.
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