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Professionalization and Power in World War I Dietetics

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Professionalization and Power in World War I Dietetics W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2009 Recipe for citizenship: Professionalization and power in World War I dietetics Kathleen Marie Scott College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Home Economics Commons, and the Military and Veterans Studies Commons Recommended Citation Scott, Kathleen Marie, "Recipe for citizenship: Professionalization and power in World War I dietetics" (2009). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623551. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-xw8d-en82 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recipe for Citizenship: Professionaiization and Power in World vVar I Dietetics Kathleen Marie Scott Spencer, Iowa, United States Bachelor of Arts, Smith College, 1997 Master of Arts, The College of William and Mary, 2001 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies Program The College of William and Mary August2009 © 2009 Kathleen Marie Scott APPROVAl PAGE This dissertation Recipe for Citizenship: Gender, Professiona~ization, and Power in World War I Dietetics is submitted in partial fuifmment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ' Kathleen Marie Scott Approved by the Committee, May 2009 11)0l merican Studies Dr. Maureen Fitzgerald, Ass iate Professor of Religio s tudies and American Studies The College of William an Mary ~~~~r~D a~~Q~ Dr. Kimberley Phillips, Francis and Edwin Cum@f:gs Associate Professor of History and American Studies The College of William and Mary utside Reader Dr. Kelly A. Joyce, Associate Professor of Sociology The College of William and Mary ABSTRACT PAGE This dissertation is an analysis of the professionalization tactics of white, native-born, Protestant, middle-class women who served with the U.S. armed forces as dietitians during World War I. Through the overlapping rubrics of maternalism, citizenship, and professionalism, I examine the ways in which dominant race, class, and gender ideologies inflected their quest for professionalization. I specifically examine the way hospital dietitians infused their expertise with rhetoric of race betterment and national security to acquire distinct status and authority in relation to other female. medical/health practitioners. ln this study, I locate the ideological origins of Public Law 36, 80th Congress, establishing the U.S. Women's Medical Specialist Corps, within the cultural sensibilities of American antebellum evangelical health reform movements. Public Law 80-36 (April 16, 1947) authorized Regular Army commissions for dietitians, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. I contend that dietetics, a central force in the rise of the home economics movement, also served as an important portal for women's access to higher education in science and medicine. Finally, I hold that military service was critical to the professionalization of women's labor and claims to citizenship in early twentieth century America. In other words, military service allowed native-bam, Pmtestant, middle- and upper-class, white American women to mobilize, network, and expand the scope of their work, as well as leaven their access to professional resources and political power. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Origins of the U.S. Women's Medical Specialist Corps 48 Perfecting the Race 109 Competing for Rank and Relief 164 The Power of an Ideal 225 Conclusion 298 Illustrations 308 Bibliography 330 Vita 347 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I want to thank Professor Leisa Meyer, my advisor and dissertation chair, for her patience, support, and encouragement over the years. She has inspired me beyond measure and has challenged me to think analytically and expansively about U.S. women's history. With steady guidance and trusted counsel, she also allowed me to stumble and to be surprised by my own findings. Her commitment to social justice and her teachings extend far beyond the classroom. She has been a wise mentor and the ultimate professional. For this, and much more, I am deeply grateful. I am also thankful for the insightful critiques of a distinguished dissertation committee who shaped this manuscript both individually and collectively. Thank you Maureen Fitzgerald, Kim Phillips, Charlie McGovern, and Kelly Joyce for being an important part of my graduate journey. I owe immeasurable debt to Brigadier General Wilma L. Vaught, USAF, (Ret.), Linda Witt, and Pat Hodges for introducing me to my dissertation topic at the Women In Military Service For America Memorial Foundation, Inc. I am particularly grateful to General Vaught and Linda Witt for the tremendous professional opportunities they afforded me as an employee of the Women's Memorial Foundation. This project would not have been possible without the resourcefulness of many skilled archivists from around the country. In particular, I would like to thank the following people for their time and expertise: Mary Teloh, Margery Jessup, Jason Wood, Michele Morgan, George Livingston, Merlin Burt, Janet Simmons, Melissa Gottwald, Susan Robbins Watson, Janet Simms Wood, Mitchell Yockelson and Britta Granrud. My copy editor, Marcia Magnum Cronin, also deserves great credit. Any mistakes herein are my own, but her careful readings and thoughtful criticism saved me from making many embarrassing errors. Her skills and incisive comments also forced me to be a better writer. Margaret Vining introduced me to the field of U.S. women's military history in the summer of 1996 as her intern at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. Margaret also introduced me to the first woman in the history of the U.S. armed forces to attain the rank of general officer. Brigadier General Anna Mae Hays, USA, (Ret.) opened her home and her heart to my intellectual curiosities as a terminal Master's degree student. Meanwhile, Margaret pushed me to consider the implications of my thesis arguments on deeper levels. Margaret also steered me to conferences, included me on panels, and led me into her professional networks. For more than a decade, Margaret has been a wonderful mentor and friend. She has stood by me throughout many personal and scholastic growing pains. Margaret, you have left a deep impression on this manuscript and on my life. Several strong friendships have sustained me through the various stages of writing this dissertation. I am especially grateful to Kara Shively,· Nan Baker, Amy Hogan, Ella Diaz, and Carrie England. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my family. Thank you Molly and David Scott, John Scott, Fred, Brette, Evan and Frank Scott, and Darrell Roston for being sturdy pillars of support. Your love made it possible for me to complete this project. 11 1 INTRODUCTION 1'1 1920, Lenna F. Cooper, the first military dietetic supervisor and dean of Battle Creek Sanitarium School of Home Economics, reported: "Dating from a few months after the entrance of the United States into the war, there has been more of a demand for trained dietitians than the training schools can possibly meet. One college official recently stated that they had had at least six calls for every dietitian they were able to tum out."' In this analysis, I examine white, native born, Protestant, middle-class, American dietitians whose influence transcended far more than just the kitchen. I contend that dietitians struggled for rank and respect in the U.S. armed forces as a means of generating professional credibility and claiming fuller expression of their citizenship. Though the scope of their povver cannot be measured precisely, dietitians' exerted profound ili~d far- reaching influence not just upon patterns of twentieth century dietary habits- but, also on many aspects of U.S. public policy and American culture. Dietetics, defined by the American Dietetic Association (ADA) as the study of diet in relation to health and disease, was a popular career in America for white, native- born, middle-class, Protestant women at the tum of the twentieth century.2 Because dietetics blended several disciplines, accurate statistics for the number of women who worked and identified themselves as dietitians between 1880 and 1930 are difficult to pinpoint. 3 When thirty-nine charter ~embers organized the ADA in 1917, ninety-eight 1 Catherine Filene, ed. Careers for Women (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920), 222. 2 Robert Wiebe asserts that a new middle class emerged because of "a new structure of loyalties to replace the decaying system of the nineteenth-century communities ... little noticed in the heat of the nineties, a new middle class was rapidly gathering strength." See Robert Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), 111-132. Historian Barbara Epstein offers a more nuanced gender-based definition of the "middling classes" as a "broad nineteenth century social spectrum" that identified with the "cause ofProtestant orthodoxy." Barbara Epstein, The Politics ofDomesticity: Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown: Wesleyan University
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