Stranger bodies: Women, gender, and missionary medicine in China, 1870s--1930s

The encroachment of imperial powers on China during the late nineteenth century brought about a contest of civilization between China and the West. At the center of the various efforts by Chinese reformers and Western missionaries to renew or transform China was women's health, and both sides imposed Western standards of health upon Chinese women. Western medicine, as a form of Western learning, was thought to be a means by which to save Chinese women from their physical suffering, and medical missionary women were at the fore of the practical endeavors to better Chinese women's lives through Western medicine. This dissertation focuses on the encounter between Western medicine and Chinese society as it manifested itself at several levels in the interactions between American medical missionary women and their Chinese women patients, students, converts, and neighbors. What brought American medical missionary women to China was a combination of personal aspiration, cross-cultural gender politics, the unequal exchange between China and the West, and their marginal status at home. They positioned themselves as agents of progress bringing science and rationality to China. What many Chinese commoners perceived, however, was rather different---foreign missionaries were those who possessed magical powers that could be applied toward evil or beneficial ends. Locally, Western medical practice was often shaped by Chinese customs, which were infused with gender and body politics. Nationally, the contest of civilization helped give rise to China's "new women," as exemplified by the lives of a number of Chinese Christian women doctors, well-educated and not burdened by so-called barbaric customs such as footbinding. Globally, the bound foot, as a collectible object, was medicalized and traveled across borders from the field to several metropoles, which quickened the hearts of future missionaries and intensified the sense of urgency about China's rehabilitation that many self-conscious---and antifootbinding---Chinese reformers felt. This study explores the global bound foot, body mutilation rumors hostile to foreigners, the gender and body politics of the American-Chinese medical/magical encounter, and the lives of American medical missionary women and Chinese Christian women doctors.