Is he a manly type of man?: Gender, Labor, and the Training of a New Professional Identity at the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing for Men, 1919-1939

Time: 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Location: Claire Fagin Hall, Room 435, Floor 4

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Abstract:

This seminar will focus on the training of male nurses at the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing for Men during its first two decades of operation. From the end of World War One to the beginning of World War Two, the Philadelphia-based school served as one of the few training programs for male nurses in the country. Drawing on numerous archival materials from the school, including promotional and curricular documents, yearbooks, individual applicant and student records, and interviews with graduates, this paper explores the rise and fall of the school, as well as the efforts of its administrators and trainees to together define a professional identity for men in a female-dominated field. In particular, it examines the complex and often contradictory social and gender dimensions of negotiating masculinity in relationship to caring labor during the interwar period.

Speaker: Rachel Elder is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.