Vivian Bruce Conger (History) presented a paper entitled "The “in Conneckted state” of Deborah Franklin: Self Fashioning, Gender and Illness in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia" at the SHEAR Conference (Society for Historians of the Early American Republic), held in Philadelphia from July 14-17, 2011.
Her paper, part of the panel "In the Shadows: Bodies in Dissent and the Problems of Managing the Gendered Body,” offered a complex examination of the competing social and cultural imperatives that influenced Deborah Franklin’s construction of her infirmities and teased out the potential implications for how a national discourse developed regarding the body and gendered relationships. Throughout her life, Franklin responded to the distress of others, but, defying gender stereotypes, she seemed very reluctant to fully admit her own bodily frailties. In addition to worrying about losing the communal power inherent in caring for others, this paper argues that Franklin may have worried about the way others would read her body and she sought to control her image. She did not want others to construct her body as out of control and undisciplined; she did not want her thin and gaunt body to be read privately or publicly as intemperate, impious and lacking virtue. She did not want to be understood as a "female adventurer."
The complete conference program can be found here.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/2011081808295817