Center for “Race,” Culture and Social Justice Colloquia Series Wednesday, April 24, 2019 11:15-12:30 | Roosevelt 203
Book presentation by Prof. Yuki Terazawa (History Department) Knowledge, Power, and Women's Reproductive Health in Japan, 1690–1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), analyzes how women’s bodies became a subject and object of modern biopower, by examining the history of reproductive health through Foucauldian and feminist theories. Central to the rise of bio-power and the colonization of people by this power were modern scientific taxonomies that classified people into categories of gender, race, nationality, class, age, disability, and disease. While discussions of the roles played by the modern state are of critical importance, attention is also paid to the increasing influence of male obstetricians, midwives and public health nurses in the dissemination of modern power after the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Yuki Terazawa completed her undergraduate education at Ochanomizu Women’s University in Tokyo, and her Ph.D. at UCLA in Japanese history. She works on Japanese History, Gender Studies, Asian American History, and Social Studies of Science, and published articles on the redress movement of Chinese survivors of wartime rape during World War II who brought legal cases against the Japanese government. She is currently pursuing research on Japanese immigrant midwives who practiced in Seattle in the 1910s and 1920s.