Making love, making gender, making babies in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s 6-7 September
Making love, making gender, making babies in the 1950s,
1960s and 1970s
6-7 September
CRASSH, Alison Richard Building West Rd, Cambridge
Registration is now open. Please visit
By the end of the twentieth century, a combination of
profound social changes and major techno-scientific innovations had reorganized
'the sexual field' into three separate systems. The early twentieth century
distinction between sexual pleasure and reproduction was supplemented by one
between biological 'sex' and social 'gender', in which the figures of 'the
transsexual' and 'transgender' were central, with the category of 'gender'
eventually peeling off to have an entirely different
historical destiny.
While the phrase 'Sexual Revolution' once evoked changes
in sexual mores and contraceptive practices of the 1960s and after, this
'revolution' may have been part of a larger reconfiguration of the pleasure-,
gender- and reproductive-systems - the last of which became an autonomous
medical industry assisting reproduction by the end of the century. This
conference will allow a comparison of the political and ethical debates over
medical and cultural innovations in 'sex', 'gender' and 'reproduction' over the
period 1950-1970.
Presenters: Dagmar Herzog (Graduate Center City
University of New York), Gert Hekma (University of Amsterdam), Richard Green
(Imperial College)
(University College London), Lisa Downing (University of
Birmingham), Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck University of London).
For further details, including online registration and
programme, visit http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2080/
Supported by Generation to Reproduction and the Centre
for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.