Chloe Bell-Wilson

Biography

Chloe Bell-Wilson is a PhD candidate who studies the history of synthetic estrogen in the United States. She is interested in the way pharmaceutical companies, the medical profession, regulators, and women themselves shaped the trajectory of hormones as drugs and created a new kind of molecular femininity. Her project traces the many lives of estrogen as contraception, fertility aid, gender-affirming care, cancer treatment, and carcinogen, examining how these uses simultaneously offered individuals autonomy while consolidating definitions of femininity and womanhood, drawing towards a narrowing set of expectations about the hegemonic body.

Her work has been supported by the UC Humanities Research Institute’s Andrew Vincent White and Florence Wales White Graduate Student Scholarship, The Mellon Foundation, the Ford Presidential Library, the National Science Foundation, the Society for the History of Technology, the New England Regional Consortium Fellowship, and multiple university fellowships.