Visibility Counts

Community Forum: Women and the History of Fertility

Thursday, August 16, 2007

...the lateral plane of our perceptions, in all its magnitude, keeps us from a deeper, more arcane set of cognitions below. That a vertical reading might indeed be possible.

There’s a need today, perhaps as never before, to reestablish contact with that verticality: to feel ourselves rooted, not merely to the past in general but to our own specific moment within the past’s tiered continuum. There is a need, in short, to situate ourselves in regard to our own evolving…. We need to feel…. that we, the living, are continuously accompanied by the presence, no matter how remote, of predecessors. That we’re not, finally, alone.                                    -- Gustaf Sobin

Art:

Betterton, Rosemary. An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Kelly, Mary. Post-Partum Document. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Birthing:

Achterberg, Jeanne. Woman as Healer: A Panoramic Survey of the Healing Activities of Women from    Prehistoric Times to the Present. Boston: Shambhala, 1991.

Block, Jennifer. Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care. Cambridge:    DaCapo, 2007.

Davis-Floyd, Robbie E., Sargent, Carolyn F. Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross Cultural    Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Gelbart, Nina Rattner. The King's Midwife: The History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray. Berkeley: University of California Press,  1999.

Leavitt, Judith, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750-1950. New York: Oxford UP, 1986.

Contraception:

Bennet, Jennifer. Lilies of the Hearth: The Historical Relationship Between Women and Plants.   Ontario: Camden House Publishing, 1991

Hot Pantz: Do it Yourself Gynecology, Herbal Remedies. CP 871, Succ. C. Montreal, Qc, Canada H2l             4l6

Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge:    Harvard UP, 1992.

            Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge: Harvard UP,     1997.

Tiamat, Uni M. Herbal Abortion: The Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge. Peoria, Illinois: Sage-femme, 1994.

Gynecology/Reproduction:

Angier, Natalie. Woman: An Intimate Geography. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn:            Autonomedia, 2004.

Kapsalis, Terri. Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum. Durham:        Duke, 1997.

Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press,      1987.

Stanley, Autumn. Mothers and Daughters of Invention: Notes for a Revised History of Technology.        New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993.

Menstruation:

Walker, Anne E. The Menstrual Cycle. New York: Routledge, 1997.

On-line Organizations:

For on-line information and/or health care, I recommend Chicago Women's Health Center        http://www.chicagowomenshealthcenter.org/ and Pomegranate Women's Health Collective, http://www.pomegranatecollective.org/index.php, as well as Exhale: An After-abortion Counseling Talkline http://www.4exhale.org/.