The Principal Investigator proposes to write a medical and cultural history of Alcohol-Related Birth Defects (ARBD) from the late nineteenth century to the present. In describing the history of ARBD and its modern interpretation as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), she argues that these conditions are given meaning through cultural debates as well as clinical encounters. Her proposed history will focus on two critical periods, circa 1840-1919, and 1973 to the present. In the former she will incorporate materials from England, France, and Germany, whereas in the latter she will focus almost exclusively on the United States. In analyzing events in the 19th and 20th centuries the Investigator will show how the temperance movement, medical theories of degeneration, and the development of eugenics influenced the ways in which practitioners understood and responded to the problem of ARBD. A thematic focus will be the ways in which ideas about working class masculinity shaped both the political and medical understanding of what contemporaries termed """"""""alcoholic degeneration."""""""" The major part of the book will explore FAS in the late 20th century. The Investigator will examine the cultural context in which FAS has been interpreted and the role of medical professionals in giving meaning to this syndrome. A key argument will be that FAS has been """"""""demedicalized"""""""" in the decades since its naming, as the power to define its significance to society slipped from clinicians and public health experts to politicians, lawyers, judges, and law enforcement officials.
| Golden, J (2000) ""A tempest in a cocktail glass"": mothers, alcohol, and television, 1977-1996. J Health Polit Policy Law 25:473-98 |
