Guía docente de Género, Cuerpo y Mujeres en la Historia de Occidente: Prácticas de Salud y Discursos Científicos (M15/56/4/27)

This course focuses on the gendered history of sexual and reproductive body. Focusing primarily on Europe, this course examines the intersecting histories of the institutional regulation of reproductive bodies, biomedical expertise around reproduction, reproductive technologies, activism and everyday sexual and reproductive practices in history. The key theoretical perspective that informs this course is reproductive justice.   

This course is taught in English.

1. To know the history of feminist theoretical and historiographic approaches to the body, science, medicine and health
2. To apply feminist historiographic methodologies
3. To critically examine political, medical, industrial and religious historical discourses around sexual and reproductive health
4. To analyze the histories and legacies of feminist and women’s activism related to health in the 20th century
5. To understand the historical construction and circulation of reproductive technologies

1. Theoretical background: feminist historiographies and philosophies of science, medicine and health; reproductive justice
2. Historiographic background: does the body have history?
3. Regulating reproduction: reproductive policies
4. Reproductive technologies in the 20th century
5. Sexual and reproductive expertise across post-War Europe
6. Women’s health activism (1960s-1990s): genealogies and legacies
7. Sexual and reproductive practices in the 20th century Europe

Seminar sessions will combine discussions around the course readings, analysis of primary sources and class screenings.

Ross, Loretta, and Rickie Solinger. 2017. Reproductive justice: an introduction. Oakland: University of California Press.

Hopwood, Nick, Rebecca Flemming, and Lauren Kassell. 2018. Reproduction: Antiquity to the present day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Drucker, Donna J. 2020. Contraception: a concise history. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Freidenfelds, Lara. 2009. The modern period: menstruation in twentieth-century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Green, Monica Helen. 2008. Making women's medicine masculine: the rise of male authority in pre-modern gynaecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Haugeberg, Karissa. 2017. Women against abortion: inside the largest moral reform movement of the twentieth century. Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Herzog, Dagmar. 2011. Sexuality in Europe: a twentieth-century history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

King, Helen. 2013. The one-sex body on trial: the classical and early modern evidence. Farnham: Ashgate.

Kline, Wendy. 2010. Bodies of knowledge: sexuality, reproduction, and women's health in the second wave. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kościańska, Agnieszka. 2021. Gender, pleasure, and violence: The construction of expert knowledge of sexuality in Poland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Lišková, Kateřina. 2018. Sexual liberation, socialist style: communist Czechoslovakia and the science of desire, 1945–1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Morcillo, Aurora G. 2010. The seduction of modern Spain: the female body and the Francoist body politic. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.

Nakachi, Mie. 2020. Replacing the Dead: The politics of reproduction in the postwar Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pavard, Bibia. 2012. Si je veux, quand je veux: contraception et avortement dans la société française (1956-1979). Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.

Pollitt, Katha. 2014. Pro: Reclaiming abortion rights. New York: Picador.

Roth, Cassia. 2020. A miscarriage of justice: women's reproductive lives and the law in early twentieth-century Brazil. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Rusterholz, Caroline. 2020. Women’s medicine: Sex, family planning and British female doctors in transnational perspective, 1920–70. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Schoen, Johanna. 2015. Abortion after Roe: Abortion after legalization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Sethna, Christabelle, and Gayle Davis, eds. 2019. Abortion across borders: Transnational travel and access to abortion services. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Contraception Collection, Dittrick Medical History Center

Museum of Contraception and Abortion

Nursing Clio: The Personal is Historical

Book review essay and presentation (30%)

Students will choose one historical book from the list offered by the lecturer at the beginning of the course, write and submit a review (700-1000 words) and deliver a 15-minute presentation on the book. The reviewed book will be agreed between the student and the lecturer during an in-person, online or email tutoring session (one such session is mandatory).  

Evaluation criteria:

• Quality of academic writing (including correct referencing according to a standard norm of students' choice eg. Chicago, MLA, APA)
• Ability to effectively summarize and critically engage with the book content from an academic and personal perspective
• On-time submission (late submission will affect the grade)
• Linking the chosen book with the broader context of the course and the GEMMA programme

Reading memos (50%)

Students will prepare and submit reading memos (100-200 words, no more than 1 page) of mandatory readings for each session via PRADO teaching platform. Each memo has to be submitted before the corresponding session. The memos will be structured as follows:

First paragraph: summary of the main ideas and arguments of the reading

Second paragraph: critique of the reading from an academic and personal perspective. For example, you can explain what you found interesting, what surprised you, what did you disagree with and why.

Third paragraph: one quote from the reading and its interpretation. You can select a quote that you found inspiring or counter-inspiring. The quote must be correctly referenced.

Fourth paragraph: one question related to the text. Please think of a question that could be used to start a discussion.

Evaluation criteria:

• Quality of academic writing (including correct referencing)
• Ability to effectively summarize and critically engage with the readings from an academic and personal perspective
• On-time submission (late submission will affect the grade)

All submissions will be screened with Turnitin plagiarism detection software.

Essay (8000-10000 words, 100% of the grade) on an issue linked to the topics raised in the course.  The essay will be based on at least two mandatory readings available on PRADO teaching platform and at least 3 other references the student will locate through a bibliographic search. The essay will be structured as follows:

Introduction: explaining the significance and rationale of the chosen topic and the aims of the essay

Methodology: explaining how relevant literature for developing the essay was located

Results and discussion: organized, critical discussions of ideas extracted from the literature

Conclusions: dialoguing with the objectives of the essay as well as the broader context of the course and the GEMMA programme

Evaluation criteria:

• Quality of academic writing (including correct referencing)
• Quality of the literature used
• Ability to effectively summarize and critically engage with the readings from an academic and personal perspective
• Linking the topic with the broader context of the course and the GEMMA programme
• On-time submission (late submission will affect the grade)

All submissions will be screened with Turnitin plagiarism detection software. Any form of plagiarism in any of the activities or assignments (including unauthorised use of AI) will lead to the final grade on 0% and to whatever legal measures the UGR and/or the GEMMA Consortium may decide to impose. 

Attendance and participation (20%)

Attendance is mandatory. For absence policy, please consult the current version of the GEMMA Guide.

Same as ordinary. 

For information about special needs support available at the UGR please check https://ve.ugr.es/servicios/atencionsocial/estudiantes-con-discapacidad

Información de interés para estudiantado con discapacidad y/o Necesidades Específicas de Apoyo Educativo (NEAE): Gestión de servicios y apoyos (https://ve.ugr.es/servicios/atencion-social/estudiantes-con-discapacidad).