Medical modernity: Rethinking the health work of Filipina women under Spanish and U.S. colonial rule, 1870-1948

“Medical Modernity: Rethinking the Health Work of Filipina Women Under Spanish and U.S. Colonial Rule, 1870-1948,” is a history of colonial medicine from the perspective of women who had a range of health encounters with colonial officials. It makes three claims. First, I argue that modern medicine in the Philippines was produced through multi-directional transferences of knowledge between Filipinos and Americans. Second, I assert that since Filipina women were not homogenous, it is important to attend to multiple categories of difference. And third, I believe that health education gave women the agency to create counter-discourses about medicine in the country, which demonstrates that Filipino and Filipina health workers were not only modern but also critical of U.S. colonial governance. Centering Filipina women in the history of medicine allows us to see how knowledges have the capacity to either erase or empower racialized communities. Despite the uneven power dynamics, U.S. public health measures in a colonial setting always provoked complex negotiations between Filipinos and Americans rather than a simple top-down system. “Medical Modernity” puts the histories of racialized and gendered intellectuals into conversation with the histories of racialized and gendered subjects who sought incorporation into mainstream U.S. society by adopting modern principles of health and sanitation. “Medical Modernity” examines the liminal space occupied by Filipina women who were simultaneously innovators, highly skilled practitioners, and laborers who confronted the politics of medicine, labor, and representations of the body in the colonial Philippines