Haunting Histories of the Female Body kicks off

A new symposium at Tech, the Haunting Histories of the Female Reproductive Body, offers insights to anyone who has ever been intrigued about what goes on in the female body or wondered about the histories of gynecology, obstetrics and women's health.

Cindy Klestinec and Narin Hassan, both assistant professors in the school of Literature, Communication and Culture (LCC), worked together with the Science, Technology and Culture Society and the Women, Science and Technology program to coordinate the symposium.

Haunting Histories features a film series and a student-curate exhibition to explore many aspects of the female reproductive body.

"The event explores the visual, historical and political nature of the reproductive female body," Klestinec said.

"We wish to chart this history by querying the images, rhetoric and treatment of the female body in different historical periods, institutional contexts and media. Both resilient and haunting, the reproductive body remains a site of exploration as much as fantasy," Klestinec said.

The symposium is a three-part event that will be held Nov. 17 in the Ferst Room of the library. The three segments consist of "Politics of the Productive Female Body," "Female Body and Medical Authority" and "Birth in the Global Context."

The series also includes a number of presentations by scholars in the fields of history, literary and cultural studies, art and medicine.

"Just as early modern science was emerging, so too was a scientific inquiry being developed that basically took the female body as the origin site of investigation," Klestinec said.

"The symposium queries the history of the female body. It assumes that in order to understand the contours of our current situation and thinking on gender and science issues, we must take stock of the history of these debates, alternative responses, good and bad decisions, cultural assumptions that are both different from and similar to our own and all the force of tradition and innovation," Klestinec said.

"We have invited speakers whose research focuses on the moments of conflict in the history of the female body...[for example], the seventh-century debate between midwives and surgeons around the definition of expertise in the birthing chamber, and the political implications of early embryology for burgeoning democracies," Klestinec said.

The speakers who are scheduled to come include Bridgette Sheridan of Framingham State University, Christine Cooper of Brandeis University, Dr. Dizon of Brown Medical School and practicing artist and lecturer Carrie Yury.

The speakers will lecture on many diverse topics such as: "Are Women as Smart as Men?;" the "Metaphysics of Difference," an address about the origins of new life; and "Midwives, Doctors and Volunteers: Negotiating Inclusion in Egypt in the 1960s."

"We will have informal discussions following the panels and presentations," Hassan said.

In addition to the symposium, this event is also hosting a film series, presented in the library, that will last from Oct. 11 to Nov. 15.

The series includes movies like Dead Ringers, produced by David Cronenberg, and Vitals Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained by American artist Martha Rosler.

"These movies invite us to see the history of the female body from a variety of perspectives," Klestinec said.

Klestinec elaborated on the differences between the perspectives presented in the film series.

"Rosler uses the female body to criticize the science of statistics and measurement and its production of normative bodies and behaviors. Cronenberg, on the other hand, uses the female body as a site of fantasy. His characters are gynecologists who treat, fantasize and sometimes exploit the female body," Klestinec said.

The third part of the Haunting Histories symposium is a student-curate exhibition.

It includes Renaissance images of dissection, eighteenth-century anatomies of the female body and contemporary images of the pregnant body.

The exhibition also includes texts and illustrations by contemporary artists and midwifery manuals.

It will be on display in the Library East Commons beginning in November and will remain there throughout the semester.

The coordinators have high hopes that this event will have a large impact on the Tech community.

"This event will generate a broad interest in reproductive issues, offering a much needed historical perspective to our contemporary understanding of women's health, gender and health...it [also] brings a community of scholars together, and promotes and addresses some of the key issues in the biomedical track in LCC," Klestinec said.

"We hope the project as a whole will engage the Tech community in a range of discussions surrounding issues of women's health and the history of women and medicine," Hassan said.