In this course, we will explore the struggles and triumph "inbetween peoples" after Reconstruction and before WWII.
“Mary was on the lookout and peered out, a long kitchen fork in her hand like a rapier” (46). Baker’s vivid description certainly plays upon stereotypes of Mary’s lower class status. Baker, accompanied by a policeman, was never really in any physical danger of being harmed by this woman. However, I can not imagine the [...]
Upon reading Typhoid Mary, I found myself shocked at the treatment Mary Mallon received as a result of her benign affliction with typhoid. She was thrown around by policymakers, scientists, lawyers, and her peers with little to no regard for personal autonomy or emotion. However, further inspection reveals that the situation was inevitable [...]
Typhoid Mary highlights both social failure and medical progress as part of the same tale. Mary Mallon’s story portrays ethnic prejudices taking on a life in the law, but it also discusses the amazing accomplishment of bacteriology.
It was simply too easy: Mary Mallon played into the stereotypes that Americans held for Irish immigrants. The [...]
While reading Typhoid Mary I couldn’t help but ask myself–would a middle or upper class woman have been forced into isolation and stigmatized in such a way as Mary had been? Mary was isolated from everyone and almost treated like she was a disease rather than a person. When Mary was in court, Dr. Fred [...]