CfP: HANDLING THE BODY, TAKING CONTROL: TECHNOLOGIES OF THE GENDERED BODY

10th European Spring School on History of Science and Popularization HANDLING THE BODY, TAKING CONTROL: TECHNOLOGIES OF THE GENDERED BODY

Institut Menorquí d’Estudis, Maó (Balearic Islands, Spain) 23-25 May 2019

Organized by the Catalan Society for the History of Science 

Coordinated by Montserrat Cabré and Teresa Ortiz-Gómez

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The aim of the 10th European Spring School [ESS] “Handling the body, taking control: Technologies of the gendered body” is to encompass a diversity of themes around the axis of the historical construction of the gendered body as a locus of both empowerment and disempowerment and the place of the natural philosophical and biomedical disciplines in shaping the political and subjective dimensions of human experience. 

The School is particularly concerned with exploring how diverse intellectual and social movements have struggled to gain authority and cultural hegemony over women´s bodies by way of defining sexual difference and the gendered body. 

As in previous sessions, this ESS is structured in four key-note lectures and a research workshop. The keynote lectures will be delivered by four outstanding scholars covering areas such as sexual practices, the language of physiology, visual representations and feminist definitions of health expertise.  

The ESS is envisaged as a space for junior scholars to discuss their current work-in-progress with colleagues in a creative and supportive environment. The workshop will be organized in three thematic paper sessions and one poster session. All contributions –in both paper and poster format- will be commented by participants, lecturers and organizers of the School. Sessions and discussions will be conducted in English.

The ESS  “Handling the body, taking control: Technologies of the gendered body” is open to graduate students, early career scholars, professionals, and activists concerned about past and present approaches to the gendered body and the analysis of the epistemological frameworks that feminism has developped to analyse them.

Participants would be expected to address such issues as:

Abortion and contraceptive cultures

Expert knowledge and experiences of pregnancy and birth

Feminist activism and body technologies

Feminist epistemologies of the body

Gendered biopolitics

Illness, sickness, disease

Medical constructions of sexual difference

Patologization and depatologization of the female body

Sexual education and women’s health knowledge

Sexual violence, perceptions of harrassment and rape

Sexualities, female sexuality and asexuality

Visual and textual discourses of the gendered body

Women’s sexual desire and medical knowledge on female sexuality

Women’s versus medical representations of the female body

Please send proposals to discuss your research (around 300 words) before October 30 to Montserrat Cabré and Teresa Ortiz-Gómez at: 10thEES@gmail.com 

A limited number of grants will be available for graduate students and early career researchers.