History Center Events
Fall 2024 Nursing History Forums
"Dynamics of Prejudice:
Antiracist Nursing Education, 1968-1978"
Cory Ellen Gatrall, PhD, MFA, RN
Oct. 29, 2024
12 pm - 1 pm (ET) on Zoom
In 1968, the Race Relationship Planning Committee of the UCLA School of Nursing planned a three-year series of conferences and workshops, with the goal of “enabling nurses to become aware of their own prejudices and to realize how prejudices may interfere with their nursing practice.” Tensions arose quickly between organizers, who comprised both white academic administrators and Black Panther Party-affiliated faculty members; some white participants reported feeling attacked in “Racial Encounter” groups; and the last set of meetings was thoroughly reorganized and then preemptively cancelled. Two other major endeavors along similar lines met similar challenges, yet organizers persisted, convinced that diversification of the nursing workforce and deeper understanding of “cultural diversity” among nurses were key to improving the health of Black and brown communities. This talk will draw on planning documents and reports as well as organizational and oral histories to illustrate how white discomfort was leveraged to obstruct professional efforts to break down racialized barriers between nurses and patients, and how the lessons learned from these efforts differed from the objectives originally described.
Cory Ellen Gatrall (s
he/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar whose interests lie at the intersections of nursing, history, public health, anthropology, and STS. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master of fine arts in creative writing, she worked as a full-spectrum doula and abortion clinic escort organizer, then became a nurse to turn her passion into her career. Her doctoral project addressed longstanding problems of structural racism in academic nursing by investigating how the discipline engaged with ideas of racialized social difference – often called “culture” – from the mid-1950s through the rise of “cultural competence” in the late 1980s. She is a 2024-2025 Research Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
Dec. 3, 2024 at 12 p.m. (in person) - Luciana Luchesi, PhD, RN
For a recording of any of these talks, please contact the Bjoring Center's program manager.
"Bait, Switch, and Sue: Filipino Nurses’ Solidarity against Exploitative International Recruitment Practices, 2005-2009" by Andre A. Rosario, PhD, RN (September 2024)
"Unearthing Black Midwifery Stories in Virginia" by Linda Janet Holmes, recipient of the Bjoring Center's 2024 Agnes Dillon Randolph Award (April 2024)
"Neither the Colonizer Nor the Colonized: Thai Nursing Students in the Philippines and New England, 1920-1931" by Christine N. Peralta, PhD, recipient of the Bjoring Center's 30th Anniversary Research Fellowship (March 2024)
“Filling the Unforgiving Minute with Sixty Seconds’ Worth of Distance Run: Barbara Fassbinder, Nursing, and AIDS in the U.S., 1986-1991” by Karissa Haugeberg, PhD (February 2024)
"Narrating a Life of Care: Hindsight and Challenges of Interpretation in the Study of Religion and Health" by Angela Xia, PhD candidate in religious studies, recipient of the Bjoring Center's 30th Anniversary Research Fellowship (November 2023)
"Gay Nurses/Straight Health Care: Toward a Queer History of Nursing" by Jess Dillard-Wright, PhD, MA, RN, CNM, recipient of the Barbara Brodie Nursing History Fellowship (November 2023)
"Hospital City, Health Care Nation: Race, Capital, and the Costs of American Health Care" by Guian McKee, PhD (September 2023)
"History and Memory of Filipino Nurses in U.S. Health-Care Delivery" by Catherine Ceniza Choy, PhD, recipient of the 2023 Agnes Dillon Randolph Award (April 2023)
"Medicine of Care: Oral History of Nurse Practitioners in New York State" by Morag Martin, PhD (March 2023)
"Black Nurses’ Silent Struggle to Integrate Hospital Nursing in the North, 1950-1970" by Hafeeza Anchrum, PhD, RN (Nov. 2022)
"Understanding the Experiences of Male Nurse Practitioners, 1980 to Present" by Marcus D. Henderson, MSN, RN (Oct. 2022)
"A Virtual Roundtable on the History of Black Midwives" with Wangui Muigai, PhD; Michelle Drew, DNP, MPH, CNM, FNP-C, C-EFM; and Gertrude Fraser, PhD (Feb. 2022). Download the History of Black Midwives Roundtable transcript.
Program: "Ancient Wisdom, Resistance and Reclamation: The Historical Contributions of African and African American Midwives 1619 to the Present" - by Michelle Drew, DNP, MPH, CNM, FNP-C, C-EFM
"Trust, Training, and Tradition: Black Midwifery in the Early 20th Century" - by Wangui Muigai, PhD
"African American Doulas: Carrying on the Tradition, Navigating Spaces of Care and Exploitation" - by Gertrude J. Fraser, PhD
Black Midwives: A History Forum
