Since my post OB/GYNs, Ourselves was so popular (or at least inspired a very interesting debate in the comments), I thought I would let you all know about some of the large number of sessions we’re featuring at the 2008 Berkshire Conference this weekend on the subject of childbirth, motherhood, and the maternal body. As anyone working in women’s history knows, the history of the body and the history of sexuality have been really big lately, and they’ve given birth (so to speak) to books, articles, and conference papers on the broad subject of maternity. Here are some very interesting examples:
Saturday, June 13, 8:30 a.m.
MOTHERS, WETNURSES, AND THE EVOLUTION OF REPRODUCTIVE MEDICINE IN PREMODERN EUROPE
Chair: Jacqueline H. Wolf, Ohio University
Comares: Mothers, Midwives, and Wetnurses in Late Medieval Valencia
Debra Gene Blumenthal, University of California, Santa Barbara
The Anatomy of Eve: Imagining the Maternal Body in 16th-Century Germany
Kathleen Maisie Crowther, University of Oklahoma
Examining the Wetnurse: Theory and Practice in Medical Texts of the 12th and 13th Centuries
William F. MacLehose, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Comment: Rebecca Lynn Winer, Villanova University
ALTRUISM, SELF-INTEREST, AND AMERICAN MOTHERHOOD, 1943-2008
Chair: Elizabeth Watkins, University of California, San Francisco
In Their Best Interests: Social Science, Feminism, and the Revaluing of Working Mothers in the 1960s
Elizabeth More, Harvard University
Mixers and Moulders: Neo-Evangelical Models of American Motherhood, 1943-1960
Eliza Young, Harvard University
Mother’s Milk without Mother’s Body: A History of the Late 20th-Century Milk Bank
Kara Swanson, Harvard University
Comment: Janet Golden, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
IMAGING MOTHERHOOD: SHIFTING REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MATERNAL BODY
Chair: Rebecca M. Kluchin, California State University, Sacramento
Now You See It, Now You Don’t: The Maternal Body in Contemporary Art
Rachel Epp Buller, Independent Scholar
(Re-) addressing the Maternal Body: Representations of Motherhood, Modernization, and the Roots of Public Health in Chile
Jadwiga Pieper Mooney, University of Arizona
“Baby Factories” and Squatting “Primitives”: Laboring Bodies in Mid 20th-Century Representations of Natural Childbirth
Jane Simonsen, Augustana College
Comment: Cheryl Lemus, Northern Illinois University
Ann Simonsen Oswood, The Childbirth Collective
Saturday, June 13, 11 a.m.
BEGGARS AND CHOOSERS: VISIONS OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE UNITED STATES, a ROUNDTABLE
Chair: Anna R. Igra, Carleton College
Enforcing Dependency: Immigrant Mothers and Health Care Access
Lisa Sun-Hee Park, University of California, San Diego
Begging a Different Memory: Revisionary Images of Mothers in Rickie Solinger’s Beggars and Choosers
Ruby Tapia, Ohio State University
Child Care Choices: Mothers, the Market, and Federal Policy
Elizabeth Rose, Central Connecticut State University
Comment: Assata Zerai, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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Since the conference starts on Thursday, and I’ve got official responsibilities pretty much every day all day long, I don’t think I’ll be able to blog about the conference. However,
a past U.S. and Canadian history Program Committee co-Chair will be blogging the Berks, so those of you who can’t be with us in Minneapolis can check in with
Tenured Radical for news, views, gossip, and
scandal! (Well, I doubt that there will be
scandal, or if there is, I hope that it won’t involve Historiann!)