Karen Duder

Karen Duder. Public Acts and Private Languages: Bisexuality and the Multiple Discourses of Constance Grey Swartz in BC Studies, 136 (Winter 2002-3).

In a very strong competition, this article impressed committee members with its innovative theoretical discussion and use of one womans personal writings to make a major intervention in the history of sexuality. It explores the sexual and emotional relationships of Constance Grey Swartz between the 1920s and mid 1930s. Her sexuality, Duder argues, cannot be captured readily in the dominant approaches and questions posed within most writing in lesbian, gay and bisexual history. Duder draws on the rich writings she left to break down the polarities of hetero/homosexual and to offer readers tantalizing glimpses into the life of this middle-class British Columbian woman who, during her twenties and early thirties, relished relationships with male and female lovers.

Honourable Mention:
Patricia Jasen, Malignant Histories: Psychosomatic Medicine and the Female Cancer Patient in Postwar America, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 20, 2 (November 2003).

Patricia Jasen’s “Malignant Histories: Psychosomatic Medicine and the Female Cancer Patient in Postwar America” is a mature, compelling mix of theory and meticulous empirical work that concentrates primarily on medical discourses to provide a new understanding of the way in which postwar scientific “experts, created gendered explanations of the causes of cancer.