Transforming Pregnancy Since 1900 29-30 March 2012
Transforming Pregnancy Since 1900 29-30 March 2012 A conference to be held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
Around 1900, few pregnant women in Europe or North America had any contact with a medical practitioner before going into labour. By the second half of the twentieth century, the hospitalization of childbirth, the legalization of abortion and a host of biomedical technologies from the home pregnancy test and IVF to obstetric ultrasound and prenatal genetic diagnosis promised unprecedented control. New regulatory frameworks, changing relations between expectant mothers and medical practitioners and technologies for diagnosing, monitoring and intervening in pregnancy offer rich histories to explore. With scholarly writing predominantly dispersed among local studies of maternity care or focused on specific innovations, we lack a synthetic account of transformations in the management, experience and understanding of pregnancy across the whole twentieth century. This conference aims to break new ground by investigating the making, organization and communication of knowledge around pregnancy among experts and laypeople in Britain, France and the United States since 1900. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars with expertise in the history, sociology and anthropology of reproduction.
Talks will be 10-minute summaries and commentaries of pre-circulated papers, followed by discussion in 50-minute slots in such a way as to promote dialogue and critical engagement between fields and approaches.
To register, please follow the instructions at:
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/medicine/pregnancy.html
Organisers: Salim Al-Gailani (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge), Angela Davis (Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick) and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge).
Supported by a Wellcome Trust strategic award in the history of medicine to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science <http://www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/> and the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Reproduction Forum <http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/page/30/reproduction-forum-cirf.htm>
Around 1900, few pregnant women in Europe or North America had any contact with a medical practitioner before going into labour. By the second half of the twentieth century, the hospitalization of childbirth, the legalization of abortion and a host of biomedical technologies from the home pregnancy test and IVF to obstetric ultrasound and prenatal genetic diagnosis promised unprecedented control. New regulatory frameworks, changing relations between expectant mothers and medical practitioners and technologies for diagnosing, monitoring and intervening in pregnancy offer rich histories to explore. With scholarly writing predominantly dispersed among local studies of maternity care or focused on specific innovations, we lack a synthetic account of transformations in the management, experience and understanding of pregnancy across the whole twentieth century. This conference aims to break new ground by investigating the making, organization and communication of knowledge around pregnancy among experts and laypeople in Britain, France and the United States since 1900. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars with expertise in the history, sociology and anthropology of reproduction.
Talks will be 10-minute summaries and commentaries of pre-circulated papers, followed by discussion in 50-minute slots in such a way as to promote dialogue and critical engagement between fields and approaches.
To register, please follow the instructions at:
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/medicine/pregnancy.html
Organisers: Salim Al-Gailani (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge), Angela Davis (Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick) and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge).
Supported by a Wellcome Trust strategic award in the history of medicine to the Department of History and Philosophy of Science <http://www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/> and the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Reproduction Forum <http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/page/30/reproduction-forum-cirf.htm>