The Center for Asian Studies presents

"The New Midwife in Modern Japan"
with Julie Rousseau, Assistant Clinical Professor, Program in Nursing Science, University of California, Irvine

Thursday, March 8, 2012
4:00 p.m.
Krieger Hall, Room 200E

About the talk:
A rectangular black leather bag held by a woman moving night or day through early twentieth century urban landscapes proved an iconic marker of the Modern Midwife.  The black bag identified the midwife, and signaled the secret movements and practices of midwifery, or, as James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses (1922) queried upon sighting a Dublin midwife, "What has she in the bag?"  In this talk, Rousseau will explore this pivotal question: What was in modern midwifery bags or what constituted the material culture driving changing practices for midwives and birthing families.  She will explore how the "new midwife" in Japan (shin sanba) transported the consumer goods  and practices of sanitized childbirth and modern hygiene into the homes and bodies of women in urban Japan in the 1920s-1940s.

About the speaker:
Julie Rousseau is an assistant clinical professor in the program in nursing science at the University of California, Irvine. She holds a doctorate in history (modern Japan and medical history) and a master's degree in nursing from Columbia University, and is a certified nurse midwife. She teaches clinical ethics, professional issues in nursing, and senior research, in addition to her didactic and clinical teaching in women's health at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Her research focuses on the material culture and translational practices of obstetrics and midwifery across borders and historical periods. She is currently co-chair of the American College of Nurse Midwives in Los Angeles where she lives.

For more information, please contact Sandy Cushman, scushman@uci.edu or 949-824-3344