Histoire de l'infertilité

INFERTILITY IN HISTORY, SCIENCE and CULTURE

This symposium will explore the history of infertility, and the place of infertility in science and culture. Our primary focus is historical, but we welcome contributions from scholars in different disciplines and employing a range of approaches - social scientific, literary, feminist, psychological, and legal. We aim to bring together researchers working on this fascinating and under-explored field in order to better understand historical and contemporary representations and experiences of infertility across different cultures and from different perspectives. Potential topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

- the role of gender, class and race in shaping experiences and representations of infertility;
- individual, familial, and social contexts of infertility;
- infertility as a bodily and/or psychological experience;
- heterosexuality, homosexuality, and involuntary childlessness;
- reproductive science and access to reproductive technologies;
- the interplay of medical, scientific, and cultural understandings of infertility;
- the role of politics, law, and religion in shaping experiences of and attitudes towards infertility;
- the relation of perceptions of infertility to beliefs about fertility control, the constitution and social role of the family, and sexuality.

Speakers include Sarah Toulalan, Simon Szreter, Duncan Wilson, Martin Richards, Margaret Marsh and Naomi Pfeffer. An edited collection based on the presented papers is planned.

The symposium is co-convened by Gayle Davis (University of Edinburgh) and Tracey Loughran (Cardiff University). It will be held at the University of Edinburgh on 4-5 July 2013. Abstracts of 250 words, for papers of 20-30 minutes, should be sent to LoughranTL@cardiff.ac.uk by 25th January 2013.

A number of bursaries have been made available for postgraduate students, thanks to the Society for the Social History of Medicine. For further details, email Gayle.Davis@ed.ac.uk. We hope to keep costs

very low for other participants, thanks to funding from the Universities of Cardiff and Edinburgh and SSHM.