The UT Southwestern Health Sciences Digital Library & Learning Center is pleased to host Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives – a six-panel traveling exhibition provided by the National Library of Medicine – that uses images, manuscripts, and records to tell the stories of the nurses who witnessed the effects of domestic violence and campaigned for change.

Activists and reformers in the United States have long recognized the harm of domestic violence and sought to improve the lives of women who were battered. During the late 20th century, nurses took up the call. With passion and persistence, they worked to reform a medical profession that largely dismissed or completely failed to acknowledge violence against women as a serious health issue. Beginning in the late 1970s, nurses were in the vanguard as they pushed the larger medical community to identify victims, adequately respond to their needs, and work towards the prevention of domestic violence. This is their story.

Confronting Violence, Improving Women’s Lives began traveling around the United States in October 2015 and will be at the South Campus Library until January 27, 2018.

Credit line: The National Library of Medicine produced this exhibition.
Curated by Catherine Jacquet, PhD
Images courtesy Ellen Shub and National Library of Medicine.