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:

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.

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