Women, Gender, and Sexuality: Spiritual Surgery: Violence, Gender, and the Origins of Modern Claims About Unborn Life

Description

Please join the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality for a talk by Elizabeth O'Brien, assistant professor in the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. O'Brien will present a paper titled "Spiritual Surgery: Violence, Gender, and the Origins of Modern Claims about Unborn Life," and a Q&A will follow.

Elizabeth O'Brien is currently working on a book developed from her award-winning dissertation, Intimate Interventions: The Cultural Politics of Reproductive Surgery in Mexico, 1790-1940. The book aims pursues three connected goals: "first, it analyzes how Catholic theologies of personhood have influenced—and been influenced by—modern medical ideas about pregnancy and reproduction; second, it reveals how racial prejudice has affected Mexican obstetric training and clinical practice; and third, it explores how historians can uncover experiential and embodied histories in Mexico's rich medical archives." In a related project, O'Brien is working on a translation and critical edition of Inquisitor Francesco Emanuele Cangiamila's 1745 text, Embriologia Sacra, in collaboration with Altina Hoti. Her recent publications include "The Many Meanings of Abortion: Pregnancy Termination and the Instability of a Medical Category Over Time" in Women's History Review, and "Gender, Pregnancy, and Reproduction in the Atlantic World" (with Bonnie Lucero), in Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History. This past February, she was one of the organizers for the phenomenal conference, Critical Conversations on Reproductive Health/Care: Past, Present, and Future, hosted by Johns Hopkins.