The inspiration for this project came from an assignment from my first year in graduate school. I started a paper where I planned to examine female health in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. I started looking into primary source materials on 19th century medical devices and got completely lost in the process. I was simultaneously horrified and fascinated by what I was reading and seeing. I ended up solely writing about those medical texts, throwing The Awakening to the side. For my capstone, I decided to explore the history of female health through artifacts from 19th century America. However the more I worked, the more I began noticing objects around me. I decided to extend my focus from the 19th century through the present, noting the changing attitudes that the evolving objects marked. I created five galleries, each focusing on a specific aspect of female reproductive health. In the first four galleries, Menstruation, Breasts, Fashion, and Birth, I curated objects from the 19th century to the present, placing the objects alongside text that would frame the objects in their original contexts. In the fifth gallery, I display my podcast, Natal Narratives that I began hosting after being inspired by this project. On the podcast, I interview women about their varying birth experiences. These podcasts function as another sort of artifact in the history of female reproductive health, personal accounts that allow us to depart from the historical and the general into the present and personal. I also created a twitter feed, another curation of articles, images, and tweets, tracking the current conversations about the female body. 

The common thread that I found connected all of the galleries was the idea that the containment of the female body is more important than a woman's health. Women wear tampons even though they are not safe because the alternative is unacceptable. The visibility of menstrual blood is too offensive, so women risk infection, using products that are riddled with unknown chemicals. Breastfeeding is offensive to the public, so women feel pressure to cover their bodies; the discomfort of the public is more important than feeding an infant. In the 19th century, pregnant women wore corsets despite the physical risks because they wanted to function as a part of society. Containing and shaping the female body was more important than having a healthy pregnancy. Hospitals control births, pushing sometimes unnecessary interventions to speed up the process because scheduling and time is more important than female health. I hope these galleries both bring awareness to the progress made since the 19th century, but also reveal that the anxiety about the unrestrained female body that is still problematic today.