Paper short abstract:

In my paper I analyze local strategies regarding medicalization and ethnicization of the (prostitute) women’s body in the 1920s and 1930s in a Transylvanian city, Cluj. My main question is: how did medical authority see the “prostitute problem” and nationalize it, in this “transitional” situation?

Paper long abstract:

In my paper I will analyze local strategies regarding medicalization and ethnicization of the women's body in the very sensible transitional period of the 1920s and 1930s in Cluj, a Transylvanian city. Focusing on medical drifts that intended to construct a whole range of institutions around the "prostitution's problem", I will try to answer the question: how did medical authority and its public pressure see this problem, how did they want to change local sexual norms and "nationalize" them, and how could this authority manage this "transitional" situation? How can this interference be measured (if it can be altogether) besides the increasing number of treated prostitutes and horrible number of other clinically supervised and treated patients?

It was not accidental that medical records became main sources for shaping prostitution as changes within sexuality were truly connected with the development of the Romanian medicine sector in the Transylvanian society. The newly created hospitals and medical institutions like the Woman's Hospital, the Ambulatory for venereal diseases, the Department of Biopolitics at the Medical University, the periodicals as "Buletin eugenic şi biopolitic", "Clujul medical", "Sănătatea publică" etc. represented not only the powerful symbol of the medical authority in its Foucaultian meaning but new discourses about nation, integrity and public health, too.