Houck, Judith A. 1963- (Judith Ann Houck)

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Houck, Judith A. 1963- (Judith Ann Houck)

PERSONAL:

Born February 12, 1963.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1426 Medical Science Center, 1300 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706-1585; fax: 608-262-2327. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, physician, researcher, and educator. University of Wisconsin—Madison, assistant professor of women's studies, medical history and bioethics, and the history of science; Center for Women's Health Research, researcher.

WRITINGS:

Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in Modern America, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2006.

Contributor to books, including Controversies in Science & Technology: From Maize to Menopause, edited by Daniel Lee Kleinman, Abby J. Kinchy, and Jo Handelsman, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2005.

Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Bulletin of the History of Medicine and Current Woman's Health Reports.

SIDELIGHTS:

Judith A. Houck is a writer, researcher, and educator who serves as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She has appointments in several departments within the university, including the Department of Women's Studies, Medical History and Bioethics, and History of Science, noted a biographer on the Harvard University Press Web site. She also holds an appointment at the university's Center for Women's Health Research.

In a biography of Houck at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, History of Science Web site, she notes that her research interests involve topics including women's health, sex and sexuality, bodies, and race and medicine.

Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in Modern America contains an in-depth look at the concepts and ideas expressed about female menopause from doctors, the popular press, and from women, starting in the late nineteenth century to the present. She looks at three distinct chronological periods: 1897 to 1937, when questions about the nature and effect of menopause on social roles and family life began to arise; 1938 to 1962, when the debate over hormones and their use became more intense; and 1963 to the present, when women, feminists, and physicians have engaged in a more contentious conflict about the use and abuse of hormone therapy. She looks at the publication of Robert Wilson's book Feminine Forever, and the impact of Wilson's endorsement of lifelong hormone treatment for women. She also notes that, in the mid-1970s, concerns about connections between hormones and cancer began to be expressed more often and more openly. "Within this context of cultural and medical ‘judgments,’ she traces the ‘continuity and change that reflected, created, and supported’ twentieth-century, white, middle-class women's menopausal experiences," stated Susan E. Bell and Susan M. Reverby, writing in the Women's Review of Books. "Drawing upon several archival surveys, she provides insight into what these women actually thought about the ‘change of life,’ and she provides thoughtful readings of works by medical experts, regular practitioners, popular authors, feminist activists, and scholars—as she uses them to illustrate how women ‘forced physicians to share their authority.’"

Houck's "writing style is academic but readable, and much of the information she's unearthed is both horrifying and fascinating," remarked Michele Kort in Ms. Kort found that Houck takes a moderate approach to her evaluation of the role that medical science and the major pharmaceutical companies took in encouraging potentially dangerous hormone therapy, but she notes that Houck also uncovers a pair of important political points. The first is that women need more research and better information on the nature of hormone therapy and its short- and long-term effects before they can make fully informed decisions. Second, "menopause is as much a cultural construct as a physical transition, and no drug will ever deal with our feelings about our changing bodies," Kort stated.

"Houck takes white, middle-class women's experiences and the complexity of medicine seriously," noted Bell and Reverby. "Activists will find her historical analysis provocative and scholars will be particularly interested in the sources she has identified and examined. Houck's view of menopause certainly complicates both medical and feminist history, proof that this story from the past can still generate heat."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 2006, Regina Morantz-Sanchez, review of Hot and Bothered: Women, Medicine, and Menopause in Modern America, p. 1556.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 2006, P. Lefler, review of Hot and Bothered, p. 1857.

Isis, December, 2006, Wendy Kline, review of Hot and Bothered, p. 797.

Madison Magazine, February, 2006, Nicole Resnick, "Under the Microscope," review of Controversies in Science & Technology: From Maize to Menopause.

Ms., spring, 2006, Michele Kort, "The Disease That Never Was," review of Hot and Bothered.

Women's Review of Books, November 1, 2006, Susan E. Bell and Susan M. Reverby, "Sweating It Out," review of Hot and Bothered, p. 9.