Meredith Reifschneider | San Francisco State University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Meredith Reifschneider
Nursing History Review, 2020
In May 1803, the Danish Crown abolished the traffic of enslaved people from Africa.1 Although the... more In May 1803, the Danish Crown abolished the traffic of enslaved people from Africa.1 Although the repercussions of this legislation were immense for international relationships among European nations, for plantation owners, and most importantly, for enslaved people, the ban on the slave trade precipitated drastic changes to the healthcare system in the Danish colonies. By 1822, the Danish Board of Health passed legislation that required all European physicians working in the Danish West Indies to submit yearly health reports to Copenhagen.2 These documents provided a record of raw, demographic data and narrative accounts of how physicians treated their patients on the islands. These reports also contained information the Danish Board of Health and Danish colonial administration deemed important for managing the health of African, African-descendent, and European people. Just as statistical data reveal the social and political contexts in which it developed,3 the Board of Health docu...
Society for Historical Archaeology, 2019
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020
Recent paleoethnobotanical approaches in historical archaeology have successfully explored the in... more Recent paleoethnobotanical approaches in historical archaeology have successfully explored the intersection of plantation foodways, social relations, and the environment in contexts of enslavement, including in the colonial period Caribbean. This article presents an analysis of macrobotanical remains from Estate Cane Garden, a 19th century A.D. plantation hospital in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. In this study, we demonstrate how enslaved people actively negotiated the adverse conditions of slavery by using plant resources to secure their own well-being, by examining the types of plants found at the hospital, interpreting potential plant use, and by situating the hospital assemblage within a broader Caribbean comparative analysis. Ultimately, we argue for the need for a greater number of paleoethnobotanical studies of historic (16th-19th century) Caribbean sites to develop more robust intersite comparisons in order to reach a more nuanced understanding of the roles of plants in plantation lifeways.
World Archaeology, 2018
This study explores the effects of Danish colonial healthcare policy on enslaved people in St Cro... more This study explores the effects of Danish colonial healthcare policy on enslaved people in St Croix, Danish West Indies. After the slave-trade ban in 1803, colonial administrators and planters implemented healthcare policies to curb demographic decline. This included constructing hospitals at privately owned plantations. Plantation hospitals were overseen by European physicians, but daily care was provided by enslaved nurses. This study draws on previous archaeological research on insitutions and African Diaspora healthcare systems in order to examine how enslaved nurses negotiated the effects of top-down colonial medicine within the context of a plantation hospital at Estate Cane Garden. Archaeological findings indicate that nurses drew from a range of local plant and animal resources to provide care for their patients. The lack of easily definable medical artefacts from the hospital draws into relief the need for archaeologists to reconsider how healthcare and healing in the past are interpreted.
Current Anthropology, 2010
In Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Ann Laura Stoler exam... more In Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Ann Laura Stoler examines the apprehensions, epistemic uncertainties, and sentiments that shaped colonial policy in the Dutch Indies. The author presents a nuanced and meticulous reading of official nineteenthand twentiethcentury Dutch colonial archives and decenters how postcolonial scholars, feminist scholars, and historians have characteristically approached colonial texts. The aim of many postcolonial scholars is to recuperate and reintroduce the voices and agency of colonized or subaltern individuals. In contrast, Stoler seeks to elucidate the epistemologies and sentiments of colonial administrators, teachers, doctors, and orphanage directors by reading Dutch colonial archives “along the grain.” She views colonial archives as fleeting configurations of epistemological and political anxieties rather than sites of pure erasure or misrepresentation. Treating archives as ethnographic data in this way illuminates the aspirations, dissentions, epistemic anxieties, and sentiments of colonial officials and draws attention to the “fault lines and ragged edges of colonialism’s archival genres” (p. 53). In discerning the ruptures and inconsistencies within colonial common sense, Stoler explores how colonial administrators sought to assess and identify politically versus privately motivated sentiments and to classify racial and social boundaries. In pursuing this task, Stoler develops the central theoretical argument that political rationalities of administrative authorities were as equally founded in managing affective states and sentiments as they were in the mastery of specific principles of reason and rationality. Systems of scientific knowledge and reasoned management may have been the foundations of colonial authority but only insofar as they were grounded in the simultaneous governance of affections and sentiments. The establishment of a “colonial order of things,” through which colonial policies arose, was founded on a European common sense, or specific epistemic habits,
Society for Historical Archaeology, 2015
Nursing History Review, 2020
In May 1803, the Danish Crown abolished the traffic of enslaved people from Africa.1 Although the... more In May 1803, the Danish Crown abolished the traffic of enslaved people from Africa.1 Although the repercussions of this legislation were immense for international relationships among European nations, for plantation owners, and most importantly, for enslaved people, the ban on the slave trade precipitated drastic changes to the healthcare system in the Danish colonies. By 1822, the Danish Board of Health passed legislation that required all European physicians working in the Danish West Indies to submit yearly health reports to Copenhagen.2 These documents provided a record of raw, demographic data and narrative accounts of how physicians treated their patients on the islands. These reports also contained information the Danish Board of Health and Danish colonial administration deemed important for managing the health of African, African-descendent, and European people. Just as statistical data reveal the social and political contexts in which it developed,3 the Board of Health docu...
Society for Historical Archaeology, 2019
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2020
Recent paleoethnobotanical approaches in historical archaeology have successfully explored the in... more Recent paleoethnobotanical approaches in historical archaeology have successfully explored the intersection of plantation foodways, social relations, and the environment in contexts of enslavement, including in the colonial period Caribbean. This article presents an analysis of macrobotanical remains from Estate Cane Garden, a 19th century A.D. plantation hospital in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. In this study, we demonstrate how enslaved people actively negotiated the adverse conditions of slavery by using plant resources to secure their own well-being, by examining the types of plants found at the hospital, interpreting potential plant use, and by situating the hospital assemblage within a broader Caribbean comparative analysis. Ultimately, we argue for the need for a greater number of paleoethnobotanical studies of historic (16th-19th century) Caribbean sites to develop more robust intersite comparisons in order to reach a more nuanced understanding of the roles of plants in plantation lifeways.
World Archaeology, 2018
This study explores the effects of Danish colonial healthcare policy on enslaved people in St Cro... more This study explores the effects of Danish colonial healthcare policy on enslaved people in St Croix, Danish West Indies. After the slave-trade ban in 1803, colonial administrators and planters implemented healthcare policies to curb demographic decline. This included constructing hospitals at privately owned plantations. Plantation hospitals were overseen by European physicians, but daily care was provided by enslaved nurses. This study draws on previous archaeological research on insitutions and African Diaspora healthcare systems in order to examine how enslaved nurses negotiated the effects of top-down colonial medicine within the context of a plantation hospital at Estate Cane Garden. Archaeological findings indicate that nurses drew from a range of local plant and animal resources to provide care for their patients. The lack of easily definable medical artefacts from the hospital draws into relief the need for archaeologists to reconsider how healthcare and healing in the past are interpreted.
Current Anthropology, 2010
In Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Ann Laura Stoler exam... more In Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Ann Laura Stoler examines the apprehensions, epistemic uncertainties, and sentiments that shaped colonial policy in the Dutch Indies. The author presents a nuanced and meticulous reading of official nineteenthand twentiethcentury Dutch colonial archives and decenters how postcolonial scholars, feminist scholars, and historians have characteristically approached colonial texts. The aim of many postcolonial scholars is to recuperate and reintroduce the voices and agency of colonized or subaltern individuals. In contrast, Stoler seeks to elucidate the epistemologies and sentiments of colonial administrators, teachers, doctors, and orphanage directors by reading Dutch colonial archives “along the grain.” She views colonial archives as fleeting configurations of epistemological and political anxieties rather than sites of pure erasure or misrepresentation. Treating archives as ethnographic data in this way illuminates the aspirations, dissentions, epistemic anxieties, and sentiments of colonial officials and draws attention to the “fault lines and ragged edges of colonialism’s archival genres” (p. 53). In discerning the ruptures and inconsistencies within colonial common sense, Stoler explores how colonial administrators sought to assess and identify politically versus privately motivated sentiments and to classify racial and social boundaries. In pursuing this task, Stoler develops the central theoretical argument that political rationalities of administrative authorities were as equally founded in managing affective states and sentiments as they were in the mastery of specific principles of reason and rationality. Systems of scientific knowledge and reasoned management may have been the foundations of colonial authority but only insofar as they were grounded in the simultaneous governance of affections and sentiments. The establishment of a “colonial order of things,” through which colonial policies arose, was founded on a European common sense, or specific epistemic habits,
Society for Historical Archaeology, 2015