Nicole Perry is assistant director, Center for Undergraduate Research, University of Kansas.
Policing Sex in the Sunflower State shows how patients became
prisoners in Kansas as wartime venereal disease control measures
shaped peacetime public health policies. Drawing on a unique source
base of thousands of intake records, Perry demonstrates the
diversity of experience that brought women to the Kansas State
Industrial Farm for Women while finding common threads of poverty,
sexual victimization, and gender discrimination. With a close look
at the women who advocated for and staffed the facility, Perry
explores the mixed legacy of Progressive Era women's activism and
the complicated role of women professionals. Chilling stories of
women who traded freedom for medical treatment and reminders of how
disease amplifies all kinds of social inequalities make this an
important book for today's world." - Pippa Holloway, Douglas
Southall Freeman Chair in History, University of Richmond
"Nicole Perry provides a detailed, meticulously researched, and
well-argued assessment of the creation of the Kansas State
Industrial Farm for Women (KSIFW) and its operation during the
1920s and 1930s. Through this close examination of the KSIFW, Perry
shows the powerful and sometimes life-changing consequences of the
coming together of Progressive Era efforts to 'reform'
working-class women, eugenics, and efforts by both the federal
government and the states to contain the spread of venereal disease
through a moralizing sexual double standard that held women
accountable, and ultimately punishable, for its spread. Perry
skillfully engages with multiple and often competing perceptions of
the KSIFW while also acknowledging the real restraints historians
encounter when using institutional documents to gain insight into
the lived experiences of working-class inmates." - Michael Rembis,
associate professor of history and director of the Center for
Disability Studies, University at Buffalo (SUNY), author of
Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960,
and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Disability History
"Nicole Perry's Policing Sex in the Sunflower State offers a
fascinating and timely look at the expansive power of state
governments to quarantine individuals for the health of the public.
Examining the impacts of venereal disease legislation passed during
World War I, Perry's work details the use of such legislation to
enforce a moral vision. In doing so it offers important insights
into the potentially complex relationship among state power,
morality, and gender." - Daniel Sledge, author of Health Divided:
Public Health and Individual Medicine in the Making of the Modern
American State
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