The Kentucky Historical Society has awarded Ph.D. student Hallie Knipp a Research Fellowship. The fellowship will support travel and residency at the KHS for a period of one week in Summer 2024. The fellowship will support initial research for Knipp’s dissertation prospectus, tentatively titled “Mountain Labors: Contraceptives and Eugenics in 1930s Appalachia.”
Knipp’s research is focused on the history of contraceptives and eugenics in Appalachian coal mining communities during the 1930s. Specifically, Knipp is interested in the experiences of women who were unwittingly used as test subjects in the complex efforts of contraceptive research. While histories of Puerto Rican, Black, and incarcerated women unknowingly used as test subjects have been documented, the contraceptives and eugenics practices tested on so-called “mountain women” has been woefully underrepresented in the historiographical record. This absence, Knipp explains, is not surprising, as both histories of women in coal mining communities and the contraceptive and eugenics movement in Appalachia have been largely ignored.
