Health spectacle in American popular literature, 1790-1870
Stewart, Victoria Lane
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/132564
Description
Title
Health spectacle in American popular literature, 1790-1870
Author(s)
Stewart, Victoria Lane
Issue Date
2025-12-03
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Murison, Justine S
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Murison, Justine S
Committee Member(s)
Littlefield, Melissa M
Hilger, Stephanie M
Jones, Jamie L
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
eighteenth century American literature
nineteenth century American literature
health history
popular American literature
Charles Brockden Brown
George Lippard
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Silas Weir Mitchell
Language
eng
Abstract
This project takes up health spectacle, which I identify as a prevailing concept for late eighteenth and nineteenth century American health history, first beginning in the 1790s and concluding in the 1860s and 70s. Through a study of popular literature of the period and other circulating medical thought in journals and newspapers, I investigate how instances of health spectacle shaped the development of professionalized health and medicine. Ultimately, I argue that reading for health spectacle in popular literature reveals a prevailing tension between medical expertise and medical democratization of knowledge in the United States.
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