Description
Book SynopsisIn
Fevered Measures, John Mckiernan-González examines public health campaigns along the Texas-Mexico border between 1848 and 1942 and reveals the changing medical and political frameworks U.S. health authorities used when facing the threat of epidemic disease.
Trade Review“
Fevered Measures is an engaging and multi-layered historical narrative that underscores the centrality of public health to daily life, social relations and power dynamics along the TexasMexico border over one century. . . . What makes this story particularly compelling is that Mckiernan-González frames it with a compassionate and informed plea for greater awareness of Latina/o health disparities.” -- Alexandra Minna Stern * Global Public Health *
"
Fevered Measures remaps the border as a space in which ideas of race and nation take on new meanings in relation to the development of the state and science. The book serves as a superior model for analyzing and narrating the transnational flow of people, ideas, and policies."—
Raúl A. Ramos, author of
Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821–1861“Mckiernan-Gonzalez . . . adds substantially to the large literature on the history of public health, particularly its role in controlling immigration into the United States.” -- Stephen J. Kunitz * American Historical Review *
"In
Fevered Measures, through dramatic case studies, John Mckiernan-González brings exciting new insights to the intersection of state formation, racial formations, and medical discourse. Using archives on both sides of the border, he complicates our analysis of federal and local dynamics, earning a place among the best of the new borderlands historians."—
Sarah Deutsch, author of
No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880–1940“Mckeirnan-González provides a sophisticated and fine-grained analysis of the work of overzealous public health officials on the border, but he also places these efforts in a global imperial context.” -- Elliott Young * Journal of American History *
“
Fevered Measures is a wonderful and significant contribution to Latina/o studies, medical history, and borderlands history.” -- Mark Allan Goldberg * Pacific Historical Review *
“
Fevered Measures gives us a penetrating view of the intersections between race and public health policies, bringing new insights to the history of both the borderlands and US public health. It will be valuable to students and researchers in Chicano/Latino studies, in social sciences and humanities. Appealing also to a broader audience, this welcome book contributes significantly to the current debates about Latinos and American public health. . . .” -- Ana I. Ugarte * Latino Studies *
Table of ContentsNotes on Labeling Places, Peoples, and Diseases ix
Introduction 1
1. From the U.S.-Mexican War to the Mexican-Texas Epidemic: Fevers, Race, and the Making of a Medical Border 18
2. The Promise of Progress: Quarantines and the Medical Fusion of Race and Nation, 1890-1895 59
3. The Appearance of Progress: Black Labor, Smallpox, and the Body Politics of Transnational American Citizenship, 1895 78
4. The Power of Progress: Laredo and the Limits of Federal Quarantines, 1898-1903 123
5. Domestic Tensions at an American Crossroads: Bordering on Gender, Labor, and Typhus Control, 1910-1920 165
6. Bodies of Evidence: Vaccination and the Body Politics of Transnational Mexican Citizenship, 1910-1920 198
7. Between Border Quarantine and the Texas-Mexico Border: Race, Citizenship, and National Identities, 1920-1942 236
Epilogue. Moving between the Border Quarantine and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands 274
Acknowledgments 285
Notes 289
Bibliography 363
Index 403
