'The Joy of Service'. Biopolitics and Biographies Between New York, Sofia and Gorna Dzhumaja in the First Half of the 20th Century
'The Joy of Service'. Biopolitics and Biographies Between New York, Sofia and Gorna Dzhumaja in the First Half of the 20th Century

Summary/Abstract: This paper is focused on the biographies, careers and networks of Bulgarian and American nurses as agents of biopolitics in the process of their collaboration during the establishment of modern nursing education in Bulgaria. It is based on the intensive correspondence between leading American and Bulgarian nurses in the 1920s and 30s preserved in the Nursing School Archive (in the Central State Archive Sofia), as well as on the publications (articles, books, reports etc.) of these nurses. The goal of this research is to point out the importance of the “imagined societies” of nurses and their networks. These imagined societies were important in establishing nursing as an independent profession, such as midwifery and teaching. This struggle for the recognition of professional status and for raising the importance of this profession was an important part of the efforts of the international networks of nurses. As Celia Davis writes, “…a key issue for consideration is not so much the exclusion of women from work defined as professional, but rather their routine inclusion in ill-defined support roles. This adjunct work of women, it is argued, facilitates the ‘fleeting encounter' of professional practice, thereby resting on, and celebrating, a specific historical and cultural construction of masculinity and a masculinist vision of professional work”. Another goal of the paper is to contribute to the history of biopolitics in its perspective as a history of women as social reformers and agents of biopolitics.

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