Vision reframed: Sensory formation and instrumentalization of trachoma (1914-1924)

This thesis aims to demonstrate how the narrative of trachoma, an infectious eye disease, has become a subject of regulation with the developments in the medical discourse of the early twentieth century. To achieve this, the thesis comprises around five chapters, including an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter focuses on the early twentieth-century debates in which ophthalmologists instrumentalized changes in understanding vision. The second chapter examines how this instrumentalization occurred simultaneously across national borders by analyzing international congresses on medicine and ophthalmology. The third chapter aims to reveal how the new governmental techniques are applied by establishing standards in the sense of sight. This chapter focuses on the experiences of immigrants from the Ottoman Empire to the United States as they underwent medical examinations at Ellis Island, one of the largest centers for implementing these medical and governmental techniques on eye diseases.