From the Womb to the Body Politic

From the Womb to the Body Politic

Author: Anna Kuxhausen

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres

Published: 2013-04-22

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0299289931

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In Russia during the second half of the eighteenth century, a public conversation emerged that altered perceptions of pregnancy, birth, and early childhood. Children began to be viewed as a national resource, and childbirth heralded new members of the body politic. The exclusively female world of mothers, midwives, and nannies came under the scrutiny of male physicians, state institutions, a host of zealous reformers, and even Empress Catherine the Great. Making innovative use of obstetrical manuals, belles lettres, children’s primers, and other primary documents from the era, Anna Kuxhausen draws together many discourses—medical, pedagogical, and political—to show the scope and audacity of new notions about childrearing. Reformers aimed to teach women to care for the bodies of pregnant mothers, infants, and children according to medical standards of the Enlightenment. Kuxhausen reveals both their optimism and their sometimes fatal blind spots in matters of implementation. In examining the implication of women in public, even political, roles as agents of state-building and the civilizing process, From the Womb to the Body Politic offers a nuanced, expanded view of the Enlightenment in Russia and the ways in which Russians imagined their nation while constructing notions of childhood.


Book Synopsis From the Womb to the Body Politic by : Anna Kuxhausen

Download or read book From the Womb to the Body Politic written by Anna Kuxhausen and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Russia during the second half of the eighteenth century, a public conversation emerged that altered perceptions of pregnancy, birth, and early childhood. Children began to be viewed as a national resource, and childbirth heralded new members of the body politic. The exclusively female world of mothers, midwives, and nannies came under the scrutiny of male physicians, state institutions, a host of zealous reformers, and even Empress Catherine the Great. Making innovative use of obstetrical manuals, belles lettres, children’s primers, and other primary documents from the era, Anna Kuxhausen draws together many discourses—medical, pedagogical, and political—to show the scope and audacity of new notions about childrearing. Reformers aimed to teach women to care for the bodies of pregnant mothers, infants, and children according to medical standards of the Enlightenment. Kuxhausen reveals both their optimism and their sometimes fatal blind spots in matters of implementation. In examining the implication of women in public, even political, roles as agents of state-building and the civilizing process, From the Womb to the Body Politic offers a nuanced, expanded view of the Enlightenment in Russia and the ways in which Russians imagined their nation while constructing notions of childhood.


Politics of the Womb

Politics of the Womb

Author: Lynn Thomas

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2003-08-20

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0520936647

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In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.


Book Synopsis Politics of the Womb by : Lynn Thomas

Download or read book Politics of the Womb written by Lynn Thomas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-08-20 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In more than a metaphorical sense, the womb has proven to be an important site of political struggle in and about Africa. By examining the political significance—and complex ramifications—of reproductive controversies in twentieth-century Kenya, this book explores why and how control of female initiation, abortion, childbirth, and premarital pregnancy have been crucial to the exercise of colonial and postcolonial power. This innovative book enriches the study of gender, reproduction, sexuality, and African history by revealing how reproductive controversies challenged long-standing social hierarchies and contributed to the construction of new ones that continue to influence the fraught politics of abortion, birth control, female genital cutting, and HIV/AIDS in Africa.


Policing the Womb

Policing the Womb

Author: Michele Goodwin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 110703017X

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In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.


Book Synopsis Policing the Womb by : Michele Goodwin

Download or read book Policing the Womb written by Michele Goodwin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.


Body Politics in Development

Body Politics in Development

Author: Wendy Harcourt

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

Published: 2013-04-04

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1848136188

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Body Politics in Development sets out to define body politics as a key political and mobilizing force for human rights in the last two decades. This passionate and engaging book reveals how once-tabooed issues, such as rape, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive rights, have emerged into the public arena as critical grounds of contention and struggle. Engaging in the latest feminist thinking and action, the book describes the struggles around body politics for people living in economic and socially vulnerable communities and covers a broad range of gender and development issues, including fundamentalism, sexualities and new technologies, from diverse viewpoints. The book's originality comes through the author's rich experience and engagement in feminist activism and global body politics and was winner of the 2010 FWSA Book Prize.


Book Synopsis Body Politics in Development by : Wendy Harcourt

Download or read book Body Politics in Development written by Wendy Harcourt and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-04 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Body Politics in Development sets out to define body politics as a key political and mobilizing force for human rights in the last two decades. This passionate and engaging book reveals how once-tabooed issues, such as rape, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive rights, have emerged into the public arena as critical grounds of contention and struggle. Engaging in the latest feminist thinking and action, the book describes the struggles around body politics for people living in economic and socially vulnerable communities and covers a broad range of gender and development issues, including fundamentalism, sexualities and new technologies, from diverse viewpoints. The book's originality comes through the author's rich experience and engagement in feminist activism and global body politics and was winner of the 2010 FWSA Book Prize.


Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic

Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic

Author: Julie Kipp

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-08-14

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1139436171

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In Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic, Julie Kipp examines Romantic writers' treatments of motherhood and maternal bodies in the context of the legal, medical, educational and socioeconomic debates about motherhood so popular during the period. She argues that these discussions turned the physical processes associated with mothering into matters of national importance. The privately shared space signified by the womb or the maternal breast were made public by the widespread interest in the workings of the maternal body. These private spaces evidenced for writers of the period the radical exposure of mother and child to one another - for good or ill. Kipp's primary concern is to underline the ways that writers used representations of mother-child bonds as ways of naturalizing, endorsing and critiquing Enlightenment constructions of interpersonal and intercultural relations. This fascinating literary and cultural study will appeal to all scholars of Romanticism.


Book Synopsis Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic by : Julie Kipp

Download or read book Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic written by Julie Kipp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-14 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic, Julie Kipp examines Romantic writers' treatments of motherhood and maternal bodies in the context of the legal, medical, educational and socioeconomic debates about motherhood so popular during the period. She argues that these discussions turned the physical processes associated with mothering into matters of national importance. The privately shared space signified by the womb or the maternal breast were made public by the widespread interest in the workings of the maternal body. These private spaces evidenced for writers of the period the radical exposure of mother and child to one another - for good or ill. Kipp's primary concern is to underline the ways that writers used representations of mother-child bonds as ways of naturalizing, endorsing and critiquing Enlightenment constructions of interpersonal and intercultural relations. This fascinating literary and cultural study will appeal to all scholars of Romanticism.


Bodies, Politics and Transformations: John Donne's Metempsychosis

Bodies, Politics and Transformations: John Donne's Metempsychosis

Author: Siobhán Collins

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1317173503

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Since the beginning of the twentieth century, critics have predominantly offered a negative estimate of John Donne’s Metempsychosis. In contrast, this study of Metempsychosis re-evaluates the poem as one of the most vital and energetic of Donne’s canon. Siobhán Collins appraises Metempsychosis for its extraordinary openness to and its inventive portrayal of conflict within identity. She situates this ludic verse as a text alert to and imbued with the Elizabethan fascination with the processes and properties of metamorphosis. Contesting the pervasive view that the poem is incomplete, this study illustrates how Metempsychosis is thematically linked with Donne’s other writings through its concern with the relationship between body and soul, and with temporality and transformation. Collins uses this genre-defying verse as a springboard to contribute significantly to our understanding of early modern concerns over the nature and borders of human identity, and the notion of selfhood as mutable and in process. Drawing on and contributing to recent scholarly work on the history of the body and on sexuality in the early modern period, Collins argues that Metempsychosis reveals the oft-violent processes of change involved in the author’s personal life and in the intellectual, religious and political environment of his time. She places the poem’s somatic representations of plants, beasts and humans within the context of early modern discourses: natural philosophy, medical, political and religious. Collins offers a far-reaching exploration of how Metempsychosis articulates philosophical inquiries that are central to early modern notions of self-identity and moral accountability, such as: the human capacity for autonomy; the place of the human in the ’great chain of being’; the relationship between cognition and embodiment, memory and selfhood; and the concept of wonder as a distinctly human phenomenon.


Book Synopsis Bodies, Politics and Transformations: John Donne's Metempsychosis by : Siobhán Collins

Download or read book Bodies, Politics and Transformations: John Donne's Metempsychosis written by Siobhán Collins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the beginning of the twentieth century, critics have predominantly offered a negative estimate of John Donne’s Metempsychosis. In contrast, this study of Metempsychosis re-evaluates the poem as one of the most vital and energetic of Donne’s canon. Siobhán Collins appraises Metempsychosis for its extraordinary openness to and its inventive portrayal of conflict within identity. She situates this ludic verse as a text alert to and imbued with the Elizabethan fascination with the processes and properties of metamorphosis. Contesting the pervasive view that the poem is incomplete, this study illustrates how Metempsychosis is thematically linked with Donne’s other writings through its concern with the relationship between body and soul, and with temporality and transformation. Collins uses this genre-defying verse as a springboard to contribute significantly to our understanding of early modern concerns over the nature and borders of human identity, and the notion of selfhood as mutable and in process. Drawing on and contributing to recent scholarly work on the history of the body and on sexuality in the early modern period, Collins argues that Metempsychosis reveals the oft-violent processes of change involved in the author’s personal life and in the intellectual, religious and political environment of his time. She places the poem’s somatic representations of plants, beasts and humans within the context of early modern discourses: natural philosophy, medical, political and religious. Collins offers a far-reaching exploration of how Metempsychosis articulates philosophical inquiries that are central to early modern notions of self-identity and moral accountability, such as: the human capacity for autonomy; the place of the human in the ’great chain of being’; the relationship between cognition and embodiment, memory and selfhood; and the concept of wonder as a distinctly human phenomenon.


Bodies, Politics, and African Healing

Bodies, Politics, and African Healing

Author: Stacey A. Langwick

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2011-06-23

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0253222451

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This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how healers generate new therapies and shape the bodies of their patients as they address devils and parasites, anti-witchcraft medicine, and child immunization. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics. This important work bridges postcolonial theory, science, public health, and anthropology.


Book Synopsis Bodies, Politics, and African Healing by : Stacey A. Langwick

Download or read book Bodies, Politics, and African Healing written by Stacey A. Langwick and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This subtle and powerful ethnography examines African healing and its relationship to medical science. Stacey A. Langwick investigates the practices of healers in Tanzania who confront the most intractable illnesses in the region, including AIDS and malaria. She reveals how healers generate new therapies and shape the bodies of their patients as they address devils and parasites, anti-witchcraft medicine, and child immunization. Transcending the dualisms between tradition and science, culture and nature, belief and knowledge, Langwick tells a new story about the materiality of healing and postcolonial politics. This important work bridges postcolonial theory, science, public health, and anthropology.


American Body Politics

American Body Politics

Author: Felipe Smith

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 9780820319339

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Felipe Smith tracks the emergence of particular gender images--such as white witch, black madonna, mammy, and white lady--and their impact on early African American literature. Smith gives us a remarkable synthesis of historical readings combined with a highly original contribution to the comprehension of racial thought and literary writing.


Book Synopsis American Body Politics by : Felipe Smith

Download or read book American Body Politics written by Felipe Smith and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Felipe Smith tracks the emergence of particular gender images--such as white witch, black madonna, mammy, and white lady--and their impact on early African American literature. Smith gives us a remarkable synthesis of historical readings combined with a highly original contribution to the comprehension of racial thought and literary writing.


If the Body Politic Could Breathe in the Age of the Refugee

If the Body Politic Could Breathe in the Age of the Refugee

Author: Julia Metzger-Traber

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 3658223650

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This book posits that the ‘refugee crisis’ may actually be a crisis of identity in a rapidly changing world. It argues that Western conceptions of the individual ‘Self’ shape metaphors of political homes, and thus the geopolitics of belonging and exclusion. Metzger-Traber creatively re-conceives political belonging by perceiving the interconnection of each ‘Self’ through its most immediate home – the breathing body. On an experimental literary journey through her own past and that of Germany, she puts political philosophy in conversation with somatic and spiritual insight to expand notions of ‘Self’ and 'Home'. Then she asks: What ethical imperatives arise? What kinds of homes and homelands would we create if we no longer thought we ended at our skin?


Book Synopsis If the Body Politic Could Breathe in the Age of the Refugee by : Julia Metzger-Traber

Download or read book If the Body Politic Could Breathe in the Age of the Refugee written by Julia Metzger-Traber and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book posits that the ‘refugee crisis’ may actually be a crisis of identity in a rapidly changing world. It argues that Western conceptions of the individual ‘Self’ shape metaphors of political homes, and thus the geopolitics of belonging and exclusion. Metzger-Traber creatively re-conceives political belonging by perceiving the interconnection of each ‘Self’ through its most immediate home – the breathing body. On an experimental literary journey through her own past and that of Germany, she puts political philosophy in conversation with somatic and spiritual insight to expand notions of ‘Self’ and 'Home'. Then she asks: What ethical imperatives arise? What kinds of homes and homelands would we create if we no longer thought we ended at our skin?


Black Mothers and the National Body Politic

Black Mothers and the National Body Politic

Author: Andrea Powell Wolfe

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 1793631301

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Black Mothers and the National Body Politic: The Narrative Positioning of the Black Maternal Body from the Civil War Period through the Present focuses on the struggles and triumphs of black motherhood in six works of narrative prose composed from the Civil War period through the present. Andrea Powell Wolfe examines the functioning of the black maternal body to both define and undermine ideal white womanhood; the physical scarring of the black mother and the reclamation of the black maternal body as a site of subversion and nurturance as well as erotic empowerment; and the construction of oppressive discourses surrounding black female bodies and reproduction and the development of resistance to these types of discourses. These tensions undergird a multifaceted discussion of the narrative positioning of the black maternal body within and in relationship to the national body politic, an inherently exclusionary and restrictive metaphorical entity constructed and socially contracted over time by an already politically empowered citizenry. Ultimately, close analysis of the texts under study suggests that the United States—as a figurative body complete with imagined “parts” that perform separate functions, from intelligence to labor, ingestion to expulsion—has simultaneously used and cast off the black maternal body over the course of centuries.


Book Synopsis Black Mothers and the National Body Politic by : Andrea Powell Wolfe

Download or read book Black Mothers and the National Body Politic written by Andrea Powell Wolfe and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Mothers and the National Body Politic: The Narrative Positioning of the Black Maternal Body from the Civil War Period through the Present focuses on the struggles and triumphs of black motherhood in six works of narrative prose composed from the Civil War period through the present. Andrea Powell Wolfe examines the functioning of the black maternal body to both define and undermine ideal white womanhood; the physical scarring of the black mother and the reclamation of the black maternal body as a site of subversion and nurturance as well as erotic empowerment; and the construction of oppressive discourses surrounding black female bodies and reproduction and the development of resistance to these types of discourses. These tensions undergird a multifaceted discussion of the narrative positioning of the black maternal body within and in relationship to the national body politic, an inherently exclusionary and restrictive metaphorical entity constructed and socially contracted over time by an already politically empowered citizenry. Ultimately, close analysis of the texts under study suggests that the United States—as a figurative body complete with imagined “parts” that perform separate functions, from intelligence to labor, ingestion to expulsion—has simultaneously used and cast off the black maternal body over the course of centuries.