Events

February 24, 2010

Emily Johnson, Doctoral Student, Yale University

“Who Would Know Better Than the Girls in White?” Nursing Imagery in Postwar Advertising, 1945-1950

Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania | Visit site »

Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 2U Conference Room, Room 2019, Claire Fagin Hall
University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

Abstract: Examining nursing imagery in the period after the Second World War, scholars have concluded that nurses were generally portrayed as threatening, oversexed, and pitiful characters, representing contemporary opposition to women’s labor force participation. Johnson’s analysis of advertisements in mass-market magazines challenges this interpretation by demonstrating that nurses regularly appeared as trustworthy advisers and that they were depicted performing skilled work including dispensing medicine and assisting in surgery. Acknowledging a complicated relationship between the nurse in postwar advertising and contemporary domestic ideology, Johnson argues that these images are critical to understanding the full range of nurses’ representation in postwar mass culture.