Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Congratulations to UNCG WGS Alumna Hannah Dudley Shotwell on her new book

Posted on 11/21/2019

Congratulations to UNCG WGS Alumna Hannah Dudley Shotwell . Her new book: Revolutionizing Women’s Healthcare: The Feminist Self-Help Movement in America is coming out soon. Check it out!

https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionizing-Womens-…/…/0813593026

Revolutionizing Women’s Healthcare is the story of a feminist experiment: the self-help movement. This movement arose out of women’s frustration, anger, and fear for their health. Tired of visiting doctors who saw them as silly little girls, suffering shame when they asked for birth control, seeking abortions in back alleys, and holding little control over their own reproductive lives, women took action. Feminists created “self-help groups” where they examined each other’s bodies and read medical literature. They founded and ran clinics, wrote books, made movies, undertook nationwide tours, and raided and picketed offending medical institutions. Some performed their own abortions. Others swore off pharmaceuticals during menopause. Lesbian women found “at home” ways to get pregnant. Black women used self-help to talk about how systemic racism affected their health. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell engagingly chronicles these stories and more to showcase the creative ways women came together to do for themselves what the mainstream healthcare system refused to do.

Dr. Dudley Shotwell earned a Ph.D. from the UNCG History Department and a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in WGSS in 2016. She now lives in Farmville, Virginia with her husband and daughter. Dr. Dudley Shotwell is an Honors Faculty Scholar for Cormier Honors College at Longwood University, where she teach courses on recent U.S. history, reproductive justice, citizenship, and queer history.