Ingram, HJ;
(2015)
A complicated calling: female British medical missionaries and professional identity, 1874-1924.
Doctoral thesis , UCL (University College London).
Abstract
This dissertation explores female involvement in British Protestant medical missions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It uses individual case studies to trace the work of female medical missionaries across Empire, interested in how they identified with and negotiated their position as medical women and how this understanding shaped relationships to each other, to their patients and non-medical colleagues, to Christian missions, and to wider imperial interests more broadly – both at home in Britain and on the mission field. Drawing from the personal and published writings of medical women, the project examines the contradictions and tensions inherent within the professional and private lives of the first generations of women who pursued medical mission work overseas as qualified doctors. The thesis is loosely structured as two main sections. Part one examines missionary recruitment among qualifying female doctors at home in Britain. It explores contributing factors which might have motivated medical candidates to pursue mission work and what training and knowledge these applicants held prior to field deployment about the cultural, religious and geographical differences they were to encounter. It also examines burgeoning professionalism among women doctors, tracing how they organized within medical and missionary ranks to influence professional agendas and promote institutional change. Close analysis will show how they controlled the use of medical terms and professional designations to protect themselves as a distinct and unified professional body. Part two addresses specific case studies of female doctors working overseas in an effort to follow the experiences of individual women from medical school to the mission field.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Title: | A complicated calling: female British medical missionaries and professional identity, 1874-1924 |
| Language: | English |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1463975 |
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