Hello and thanks again for these fantastic papers!

This question is for all of you: listening to your papers, it appears to me that all four of them touch on the idea of victimhood and the placement of blame to some extent. Who makes victims and who assigns blame? And how does this relate to that question of institutionalized power in your particular period or area?

Hello, and thank you for the great presentations! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

If I may ask u/historyfrombelow directly, I noticed you mentioning the "ungendering" of women following the after effects of the disease. Do you know if this was a common opinion?

There seem to be similarities between blaming the women for their conditions, and a strong connection between said virtue and disease. This pattern continues during the years leading up to and during the Contagious Diseases Acts in England, where women in prostitution were often seen not separately from the disease. William Acton especially described the laws as no danger to virtuous women, as women in prostitution were seen "a class of women we may almost call unsexed" (Acton, Shall the Contagious Diseases Act be extended to the general population. speech, 18.12.1869). Would you say this connection between the female body, disease and virtue is connected to the self-perception of physicians and the increasing relevance and institutionalisation of medicine?

This was a really fascinating panel, thanks to all of you!

Did any of the subjects of your papers have a way of reclaiming their own narratives? Did other American Indians who witnessed Tecumseh's death spread their own accounts? Did the women who suffered from ovarian issues ever have a way of challenging what doctors were saying?

Something that has stood out in this panel is how your papers relate to this idea of "bottom-up history". This has become increasingly important in the way history is researched and taught today and I wonder if you consider your own research to be "bottom-up" in approach and how that approach reflects the kinds of concerns that are important to society today?

This question is for u/historyfrombelow:

In the era of gynecology which you discuss, did midwives play any role in the kinds of cases you mention, and if so are there records of how they interacted with (or, perhaps, were left out of conversation with) the doctors? You discussed that this era was one of "medicalization," which I would presume was exclusionary of female midwives as medical professionals in the way that male doctors were able to be, but I'd assume they would still have been factors, especially in the cases you mention in which there was a question of whether ovarian dropsy was actually pregnancy.

Dropping by to give a question that ultimately might not be right in line with /u/PartyMoses 's paper, but still aimed at him, while also is a bit more personal of a question for myself.

Thoughts on the story of Chief Wahbememe "White Pigeon". I know that it is debated if the events that are told are true. However if it was, would this have been suppressed to continue to fit the narrative that you are showing us within your paper? If would very much seem like a story that social leaders of white settlers might want to downplay to continue pushing racism, and other propaganda. Also, could the whole debate about whether the legend is true or not be the remnants of that suppression of the story? again I am sorry if this doesn't completely line up with your topic, as I am still listening to the video while I write this question.

Thank you all for your presentations!

Much of the pseudoscience that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appears to have informed contemporaneous ideas about criminality. How do you feel the theme of criminality speaks to each of your papers? And, can you talk more about how the idea of what makes a criminal has shifted over time?

Before the advent of modern psychotherapy, we know there was awareness of combat based PTSD with terms such as "gone to see the elephant". However there is little that I know of pertaining to the processing and coping with the trauma.

How did we process it in ways that fit within the confines of contemporary perception of conflict and expressions of masculinity, especially in indigenous cultures that were victims of colonial expansion.

Great panel everyone!

Question for /u/mel_brzycki and /u/dr_smm:

In both Republican and PRC history, there is a tendency to ascribe petty crimes to perceived societal-wide problems - in the Republican period, it was the May Fourth-inspired critique of Qing backwardness and the general lack of a politically-conscious civil society; in the PRC period, it was the ‘feudalist’ or ‘rightist’ tendencies of the masses.

From /u/dr_smm’s excellent paper, it seems that the above tendency certainly manifested in intellectual rhetoric on ‘women’s crime’ - did the attribution of petty crime to broader societal problems also manifest in internal government rhetoric, for example government records and court cases for both ‘women’s crime’ and ‘children’s crime’? Did government rhetoric differ from intellectual rhetoric? What was the ‘original sin’ of such marginalised parties in the eyes of the central government, so to speak?

How have the myth-making efforts regarding the language used when referring to fallen American "heroes" (such as Custer) and fallen "villains," such as Tecumseh, shaped the larger narrative of American history and the ideology of American Exeptionalism that continues to be perpetrated to this day? And why do the general masses seem reluctant to redefine their national history through more neutral lenses and see it as a personal affront to their heritage?

Interesting

A question for u/dr_smm - apologies for the time zone-induced delay! I was wondering if you could add some context the kind of public discourses about you discussed in your paper. It was really interesting how Chinese discourse on these ideas were drawing on such an international, 'scientific' range of literature and ideas, and I was curious how far the conclusions being drawn in China reflected those being drawn from this same literature elsewhere. Is the Chinese interpretation and reception of these ideas radically different, or part of the same continuum of discourses and policy occurring across the world?

Good afternoon and welcome to the “Power and Projections of Trauma in the 19th and 20th Centuries” conference panel Q&A! This panel explores how power is performed through the creation and distribution of propaganda, and the ways in which this propaganda is used to express the traumatic experiences of others.

Moderated by Lisa Baer-Tsarfati (/u/historiagrephour), it explores the marginalization of Indigenous Americans, British and Chinese women, and Chinese youth.

It features:

Adam Franti (/u/PartyMoses), presenting his paper, “His Gallant Soul Had Fled: Death, Remembrance, and Race in Early America”.

Reporting the death of generals and admirals in the wars of the long 18th century followed particular patterns and were written for political purposes. Generals lying slain on the field were venerated, celebrated, represented as central to victory or nobility in defeat. Reports, from military dispatches to newspaper accounts, imitated stylistic components from earlier deaths, creating a self-referential genre of death. The pattern changes markedly when applied to the deaths of Native leaders. While similar in style and veneration, the death of Native leaders initiated long-term squabbles over the identity of the man or men responsible, and served as a way to turn the Native struggle into one that reflects white values over Native.

This paper contrasts the death reports of prominent white leaders such as James Wolfe, Isaac Brock, and Edward Pakenham with those of prominent native leaders such as Metacomet and Tecumseh, and explores the racial dimensions of military propaganda.

Katie Truax (/u/historyfrombelow), presenting her paper, “Dealing with Catastrophe: Medical Men and the Diseases of Women in 19th-Century Britain”.

This paper discusses descriptions of catastrophe in women’s bodies in the medical field in 19th-century Britain. In the first half of the century, before medical school and the medical field were codified and institutionalized, medical men struggled to deal with the diseases of women. Handling gynaecological issues was complicated by the limits of propriety in patient interactions and the limited knowledge of women’s bodies and diseases. Furthermore, the field was often cutthroat and difficult to earn a living in, leading to a continuous effort to create a narrative about women’s bodies and diseases that removed culpability from physicians, protected their reputations, and justified experimentation. This historical moment sheds light on the conflict that can arise between medical professionals, their patients, and their public perception when catastrophic medical events occur. The diseases became “incurable,” the women were blameworthy, and the uncertainty and fatality created long-term effects in the field of gynaecology.

Dr. Stephanie Montgomery (/u/dr_smm), presenting her paper, “‘A Den of Monsters’: Women, Crime, and the City in 1930s China”.

Emerging out of the chaos of revolution, the Republic of China founded in 1911 faced a dizzying number of obstacles to consolidating power across the former Qing empire. By 1927, the Republican government had gained tenuous control over some eastern coastal cities, launching social, cultural, and political campaigns with mixed results. At the same time, writers in the popular press wrote prolifically on the pervasiveness of crime in Republican-held cities, with special attention to the problem of women’s crime.

This paper examines how popular writers in the 1920s and 1930s imagined women’s crime as an unfolding catastrophe in a rapidly changing society. Their conversation fit into a larger genre of heated debate during this period: the discussion of uneducated, illiterate, foot-bound Chinese women who were economically dependent on men, widely known as the “woman problem” debate. Likewise, in writing on women criminals, popular writers used sociological studies, criminology, and pseudoscience to argue for women's socioeconomic vulnerability, but also their biological predisposition to crime. Influenced by theories of social Darwinism, they concluded that women’s crime was a threat to the domestic sphere, the Chinese race, and to the very future of building a modern Chinese society.

Dr. Melissa Brzycki (/u/mel_brzycki), presenting her paper, “Young People in the Chinese Great Leap Forward and its Aftermath, 1958–1962”.

Nine years after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, state officials initiated the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), an attempt to rapidly transform the country into a socialist, industrial powerhouse, using increased agricultural production to fund industrialization. The Great Leap Forward constituted a disruption to the lives of all Chinese people, not only because it necessitated the mobilization of all members of society, including children, but also because of the famine (1959-1961) that resulted from Great Leap Forward policies. This deadly famine caused widespread starvation and malnutrition, killing tens of millions of people.

There are relatively few sources that contain the voices and experiences of young people during this period. However, according to official records, the rate at which young people—some as young as 10 or 11 years old—were committing crimes in the late 1950s and early 1960s seems to have been increasing. State records make no connection between these crimes, which include theft and speaking out against state policies, and the Great Leap Forward and famine, but as historians, we can use these accounts to glean some insight into how young people may have reacted to this period of starvation and scarcity.

Ask us anything!