BODIES, GENDER AND MEDICINE A workshop sponsored by GENCAS and the Research Institute for the Arts and Humanities, School of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
BODIES, GENDER AND MEDICINE
A workshop sponsored by GENCAS and the Research Institute for the Arts and Humanities, School of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University
FRIDAY 5 MARCH 2010, 09.00 – 15.30
Arts & Humanities Conference room, James Callaghan Building
09.00-10.30 Welcome & Session 1: Literature, Medical Practice, and the Gendered Body
Dr Alison Williams
Department of Modern Languages
Swansea University
THE MONK’S GUIDE TO BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD: OBSTETRICS AND PAEDIATRICS IN RABELAIS.
Dr Dan Healey
Department of History & Classics
Swansea University
THE BODY OF THE GULAG PATIENT: GULAG MEDICINE, SIMULATION AND “DRAMATOLOGICAL” CONTESTS
10.30-10.45: Coffee
10.45-12.15 Session 2: Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex* (And How Knowing Will Change You)
Julia Cutmore
School of Medicine
SEXUALITY IN PHILIP ROTH’S NOVELS ABOUT AGEING AND DEATH.
Dr Lutz Sauerteig
Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease
Durham University
‘PUBERTY AND THE MAKING OF GENDER: EXPLAINING BODILY CHANGES IN SEX EDUCATION (1900-1980)’
12.15 – 13.15 Lunch
13.15-15.15 Session 3: Spectacular Illness and Disability in History
Dr Irina Metzler
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of History & Classics
Swansea University
DISABILITY AND POVERTY IN THE HIGH AND LATER MIDDLE AGES: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS OF PAUPERES, IMPOTENTES AND DEBILITATES
Dr David M. Turner
Department of History & Classics
Swansea University
‘PICTURING DISABILITY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND’
Professor Anne Borsay
School of Human and Health Sciences
Swansea University
DISABILITY, GENETICS, AND GENDER IN ADVICE LITERATURE FOR PARENTS: BRITAIN, c.1900-1960
15.15 – 15.45 Wrap up roundtable discussion and close.
ABSTRACTS:
Dr Alison Williams
Department of Modern Languages
Swansea University
THE MONK’S GUIDE TO BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD: OBSTETRICS AND PAEDIATRICS IN RABELAIS.
Rabelais’s medical knowledge, drawn from his own experience as a practising doctor, is a recurrent feature in his literary works. Over his four books he covers a wide range of medical disciplines and ailments, as well as debating the correct conduct of the doctor. His narrative of the births of the giants, Gargantua and Pantagruel, reveal Renaissance thinking on pregnancy and birth, but also draw on Classical and Biblical sources for tales of strange pregnancies and unconventional births. His books also present studies of how children behave naturally and how parents and tutors may shape their social and intellectual development. This paper will investigate Rabelais’s view of obstetrics and paediatrics and assess how serious medical thought is used to entertain the reader.
Dr Dan Healey
Department of History & Classics
Swansea University
THE BODY OF THE GULAG PATIENT: GULAG MEDICINE, SIMULATION AND “DRAMATOLOGICAL” CONTESTS
Part of my larger project on the history of medicine in Stalin’s forced-labour camps (the Gulag), this paper examines one medical problem – the simulation of illness – that encapsulates the paradox of Gulag medicine. The dramas of “simulation” that Gulag patients staged, and the dramas of “exposure” that might be staged by doctors in the Gulag medical service, throw the problems of doing medicine in Soviet concentration camps into vivid relief. The patient’s body became a site of contested meaning with enormous consequences for his survival. By examining the simulator of illness, and the medical sceptics he provoked, we can also begin to think about how to characterize this apparently humane medical system in a place of inhumane exploitation.
Julia Cutmore
School of Medicine
SEXUALITY IN PHILIP ROTH’S NOVELS ABOUT AGEING AND DEATH.
Julia Cutmore is a Senior Tutor in the School of Medicine at Swansea, where she co-ordinates social science and humanities within the curriculum. This talk derives from her study of the work of the Jewish American novelist Philip Roth – focusing on novels which explore life, illness and death themes through what is often sexually explicit material, and which suggest that Roth believes that illness, isolation, grief and death are the inevitable consequences of acquiescing to the power of desire. In this talk, she aims to talk about sexuality and desire in relation to ageing and dying, the question of whether gender is relevant, and the place of narrative and subjectivity in writing and research.
Dr Lutz Sauerteig
Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease
Durham University
‘PUBERTY AND THE MAKING OF GENDER: EXPLAINING BODILY CHANGES IN SEX EDUCATION (1900-1980)’
Abstract: Alongside the themes of reproduction, puberty featured as one of the key topics in sex education material. Based on examples taken from (West) German sex education material and pedagogical literature published between 1900 and 1980, my paper will analyse the construction of puberty and the role puberty played in narratives about the gendered body. I will argue that puberty was understood as a phase of transformation in two senses. First, it was described as a transformation from childhood to adulthood that encompassed physical and psychological changes. Secondly, puberty was represented as a phase in which a child turned either into a woman or into a man. Whereas the child was gendered to a lesser degree, the narratives about puberty contributed to the making of the heterosexual and gendered body of adults. Through these narratives, sex educators could cement gender differences deeply inside the body and naturalize them. This was not only the case with physical but also with psychological differences.
Dr Irina Metzler
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of History & Classics
Swansea University
DISABILITY AND POVERTY IN THE HIGH AND LATER MIDDLE AGES: EXPLORING THE INTERSECTIONS OF PAUPERES, IMPOTENTES AND DEBILITATES
This paper concerns the relationship between poverty, alms/charity and disability. It will focus especially on the change in mentality, from little or no restriction of the right to receive alms during the earlier Middle Ages to the restrictive legislation of the later Middle Ages, when the recipients of charitable donations had also, amongst other criteria such as moral status, to demonstrate inability to work and particularly physical incapacity - "means testing" around 1500 AD. Disability in a sense becomes the legitimisation for charity. Even the admittance into institutions such as hospitals becomes more restricted, ironically however disability can sometimes be regarded as a reason to refuse admission to hospital, since the disabled are not "sick" as such, but can gain their sustenance by begging. Begging is a legitimate form of work once a person has been accredited as legitimate beggar. Begging legislation and ordinances of labour, concepts of charity, the institutions of hospitals, and mentalities concerning the disabled body are connected through an inter-dependent system.
This paper concerns the relationship between poverty, alms/charity and disability. It will focus especially on the change in mentality, from little or no restriction of the right to receive alms during the earlier Middle Ages to the restrictive legislation of the later Middle Ages, when the recipients of charitable donations had also, amongst other criteria such as moral status, to demonstrate inability to work and particularly physical incapacity - "means testing" around 1500 AD. Disability in a sense becomes the legitimisation for charity. Even the admittance into institutions such as hospitals becomes more restricted, ironically however disability can sometimes be regarded as a reason to refuse admission to hospital, since the disabled are not "sick" as such, but can gain their sustenance by begging. Begging is a legitimate form of work once a person has been accredited as legitimate beggar. Begging legislation and ordinances of labour, concepts of charity, the institutions of hospitals, and mentalities concerning the disabled body are connected through an inter-dependent system.
Dr David M. Turner
Department of History & Classics
Swansea University
‘PICTURING DISABILITY IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND’
The history of disabled people in western societies, Rosemarie Garland Thomson has noted, is ‘in part the history of being on display, of being visibly conspicuous while being politically and socially erased’. This paper examines the visibility of disabled people in England during the long eighteenth century, by analysing the ways in which physical disability was depicted in popular prints. It analyses the ways in which portraits and satirical prints sought to regulate disability’s ‘unsightliness’, examines how visual representations produced cultural fantasies of impairment and uncovers the neglected role of eighteenth-century disabled people as agents in their own representation.
There was a strong visual tradition of representing disability and deformity in early modern Europe, but the popularity of images of malformed and anomalous bodies is often seen as being in decline by the eighteenth century, increasingly cast as being indicative of vulgar tastes and unrefined sensibilities. The period is also seen as marking a transition from a ‘religious’ to ‘medical’ model of impairment, in which depictions of human difference became increasingly subject to what Foucault famously described as the ‘clinical gaze’. This paper challenges both these assumptions by exploring the rich visual language of disability in eighteenth-century English print culture. It shows significant elements of continuity in representations of disability, while highlighting the ways artists sought to depict disabled subjects in a more ‘realistic’ manner. It concludes by comparing the ways in which two disabled artists, the engravers Matthew Buchinger and Thomas Inglefield, sought to present a view of impairment in tune with polite sensibilities.
Professor Anne Borsay
School of Human and Health Sciences
Swansea University
DISABILITY, GENETICS, AND GENDER IN ADVICE LITERATURE FOR PARENTS: BRITAIN, c.1900-1960
The relative economic and imperial decline of Britain at the end of the nineteenth century provoked intense anxiety about the quantity and quality of the nation’s stock. The policies designed to address this concern by reducing infant mortality and improving the health of babies have been the subject of detailed historical investigation. However, the crisis also generated a prolific advice literature on pregnancy and childcare, aimed at professional practitioners, schoolgirls, and parents, especially mothers. Although this material has been analysed in terms of the transition from physical to psychological health, what it had to say about disability has received relatively little attention. My paper will tackle this oversight by taking a preliminary look at a selection of books published between c.1900 and 1960. It will pay particular attention to hereditary influences, the health-inducing properties of nature available through fresh air and breastfeeding, the respective roles of mother and doctor, the construction of impairment as a normal/abnormal condition; and the balance between prevention and management.