Histoire de la naissance

Birth: personal stories to population policies

Conference 

18th-19th September 2014

University of Leeds, UK

This two-day conference, organised by the School of History's Health, Medicine and Society research group, brings together those interested in the history of birth, fertility, sexuality, demography and family life, from the medieval period to the present day, and in cultures across the world. The conference aims to situate birth in the contexts of family and society, evaluate the attitudes of individuals, groups and governments to birth, explore the impact of birth, and assess changes and continuities in the experience of birth.

Thursday 18 September

Venue: Grant Room, 3.11, Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds

10am Registration

10.20am Welcome and introductions

10.30-12pm Session 1: Birth, government and population

Chair: Stuart Murray (University of Leeds)

Iona McCleery (University of Leeds): Fertility and infant mortality in fifteenth-century royal families: patterns of inbreeding?

Andrea Major (University of Leeds): ‘His Manner of Getting into the World’: Debating Childbirth, Maternity and Mortality in Colonial India

Chris Renwick (University of York): Voluntary and Involuntary Parenthood: Population Thinking, Eugenics, and the Welfare State in 1930s Britain



12-1pm Lunch



1-2.30pm Session 2: Birth and medicine

Chair: Anyaa Anim-Addo (University of Leeds)

Alex Bamji (University of Leeds): Childbirth, midwives and neonatal mortality in Venice, c. 1600-1797

Shane Doyle (University of Leeds): Birth outcomes in twentieth-century East Africa

Will Jackson (University of Leeds): Mutating babies: child rescue and racial instability in 1920s Cape Town



2.30pm Coffee



3-4.30pm Session 3: Birth, identity and community

Chair – Adrian Wilson (University of Leeds)

Sarah Fox (University of Manchester): ‘The Woman was a Stranger’: childbirth and community in the long eighteenth century

Angela Davis (University of Warwick): The role of the Jewish community in maternal and child health provision in Palestine under the British Mandate

Laura King (University of Leeds): The impact of birth on men: becoming a father in Britain, 1950s to the present


5pm
Public lecture, in association with History & Policy Parenting Forum

Venue: Conference Auditorium, University of Leeds


Simon Szreter (University of Cambridge): Births and the collective provision of welfare – the long view c.1550-2014



6.30 Drinks reception



Friday 19 September

Venue: Grant Room, 3.11, Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds

9-10.30am Session 4: Birth in the public eye and the press

Chair: Jessica Meyer (Leeds)

Will Gould (University of Leeds): The demography of Hindu revivalism: Fertility, birth rates and the census in late colonial India

Adrian Bingham (University of Sheffield): ‘Letting in some daylight?’ The popular press and sex education in twentieth-century Britain

Kate Gronow and Andrew Murphy (Leeds student interns, reporting back from a collaborative project with the Thackray Museum): Childbirth and risk on display



10.30am Coffee, with a handling session led by museum curator Lauren Ryall-Stockton, featuring objects from the Thackray Medical Museum



11.15-12.45pm Session 5: Birth and personal experience

Chair – tbc

Leah Astbury (University of Cambridge): Delivered: After Birth Experiences in Seventeenth-Century England

Karen Harvey (University of Sheffield): Personal pain and social conflict: the experience of Mary Toft in 1726

Linda Fairley (De Partu): Experiences of forty years as a midwife



12.45pm Lunch



1.30-2.30pm Round table: The politics of procreation


2.30-3.30pm Keynote lecture

Kate Fisher (Exeter): The Sex and History Project: Using historical objects in sex education classes