When I graduated from college with a bachelor of science in nursing, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would end up getting a doctorate in English and teaching Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Washington University. While my background in nursing and my degree in English initially seemed like completely different worlds, they have merged in surprising and intriguing ways.
Beginning with my dissertation, I found myself drawn to medically-related topics in literature, and that interest has grown and expanded to research and teaching in medical history for which my nursing education and experience has provided a fabulous foundation. Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies provides the perfect arena for me to explore these seemingly diverse and unrelated interests.
Much of my research and teaching looks at the ways in which past and current medical understandings of the female body and cultural conceptions of women overlap and reinforce social ideology about women and gender roles.
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