Our first instalment of the 2015-2016 series examines the intersections between gender and colonialism in the history of medicine. We will be reading two articles which explore both of these historiographic themes in relation to the experience of female ‘practitioners’ (as nurses and doctors) in very different late-nineteenth-century British colonies.

· Judith Godden and Carol Helmstadter, ‘Woman’s mission and professional knowledge: Nightingale nursing in colonial Australia and Canada’, Social History of Medicine, 17:2 (2004), pp. 157-174.

· Antoinette Burton, ‘Contesting the Zenana: the mission to make “lady doctors for India”, 1874-1885’, Journal of British Studies, 35:3 (1996), pp. 368-397.

A light lunch will be provided.