Science and the Single Woman

Join us for this year's Women's History Month Lecture at Wyck!

Stereotypes about never-married single women span the centuries and surface in societies and cultures the world over. In the early United States, ideas about “spinsters” and “old maids” found backing in both political economic thought and medical science. “Science and the Single Women” explains the persistence of the Anglo-American spinster stereotype by tracing the medical beliefs that made marriage to a man appear vital to a woman’s health and the preservation of her beauty. The talk also explores the rise by the early 1800s of seemingly positive depictions of female singleness.

Engaging this more complex story can help historians and their readers better understand real historical women like the Morris sisters of Germantown, whose lives as single women of science placed them at the intersections of the historical forces and ideas charted in this talk.

This talk will be held in person in the Wyck parlor. Advance registration is required.

Click "More Info and Registration" below to register.

About the speaker:

Julia Bouwkamp is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in women’s and gender history, the history of the body, the history of emotions, and the history of medicine in the early United States. Her dissertation, tentatively entitled "Bodies of Critique: Women, Writing and the Politics of the Personal in the Early United States," explores how women authors used writing to process their emotions and embodied struggles and redirect them outward as social criticism. Before coming to the University of Pennsylvania, Julia pursued a career in public history working for various museums and historical organizations, including the Michigan Historic Preservation Network, the Greater Grand Rapids Women’s History Council, the Delaware Historical Society, and the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library.