Elizabeth Topping

Georgia State University

Description of Work: 

Working in a feminist archival tradition, I am examining through a microhistorical lens the rhetorical work of Mary Breckinridge and the Frontier Nursing Service in the 1920s and 1930s as the Kentucky organization pushed class boundaries of who merited the most advanced reproductive and public health services, but also reinforced pre-existing boundaries that limited that care to “cooperative” and generally white mothers. In keeping with existing medical traditions, this work tended to rhetorically represent mothers as vessels for improving and upholding the nation due to prevailing racial ideologies and through their reproductive capacity even as the rest of the nation wrestled over concerns with falling birthrates and changing demographics. Largely eschewing federal and state funds, Breckinridge helped to rhetorically shape national understandings of midwifery, Appalachia, and public health through her constant fundraising activities that largely focused on certified nurse-midwives and their care to the extent that she is given partial credit for saving midwifery as a profession in the United States However, much of their work fit more into public health as understood now—vaccinations, wellness care, and pedagogical approaches to improve community health. Through analysis of extant archival, published, and oral history records, this dissertation intends to understand not only how Breckinridge rhetorically constructed public health, midwifery, and southeastern Kentucky, but to discuss ways in which she both limited and expanded the rhetorical boundaries of midwifery and public health. In illuminating the rhetorical work of the Frontier Nursing Service early in the twentieth century, I hope to begin to contribute to ongoing conversations about rural healthcare, public health and its pedagogy, and the foundations of our modern medical system.

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