The Man-Made Woman:
Technology, Race, and Women's Bodies in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century U.S.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom
with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion,
and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin
scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous
black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a
more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the
dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black
lips.
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Mary Shelley's classic tale of an ambitious young man who uses electricity and a bit of
alchemy to produce a new life form raises critical questions about the implications of
(literally) man-made technology. Keeping Shelley's horrifying vision in mind, we will
examine how technologies, often developed and controlled by white men, have affected
women's bodies in the nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. We will consider technology in
a broad sense, as those innovations and practices that promise to improve people's
lives--including the skin-lightening and hair-straightening products that were directed at
African American women in the early 1900s, and the contemporary "hands-free"
breast-pump that enables women to work and breast feed simultaneously. Throughout the
term, we will ask a series of questions: If we understand technology as that which
improves lives, to which lives do we refer? What exactly does "improvement" mean
in this context? As we begin the new millennium, we should consider women's development
and implementation of technologies. What does a feminist technology look like? We will
approach these questions by examining a variety of technologies including plastic surgery,
the workplace, reproduction, and medicine.
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