10th European Spring School (ESS) on History of Science and Popularization; Organized by the Catalan Society for the History of Science; Coordinated by Montserrat Cabré and Teresa Ortiz-Gómez

Veneu: Institut Menorquí d’Estudis, Maó, Balearic Islands, Spain
Time: 23-25 May 2019
Proposals by: 30 October 2018

The aim of the 10th ESS is to encompass a diversity of themes around the axis of the historical construction of the gendered body as a locus of both empowerment and disempowerment and the place of the natural philosophical and biomedical disciplines in shaping the political and subjective dimensions of human experience.

The School is particularly concerned with exploring how diverse intellectual and social movements have struggled to gain authority and cultural hegemony over women’s bodies by way of defining sexual difference and the gendered body. Participants would be expected to address such issues as:

· Abortion and contraceptive cultures

· Expert knowledge and experiences of pregnancy and birth

· Feminist activism and body technologies

· Feminist epistemologies of the body

· Gendered biopolitics

· Illness, sickness, disease

· Medical constructions of sexual difference

· Patologization and depatologization of the female body

· Sexual education and women’s health knowledge

· Sexual violence, perceptions of harrassment and rape

· Sexualities, female sexuality and asexuality

· Visual and textual discourses of the gendered body

· Women’s sexual desire and medical knowledge on female sexuality

· Women’s versus medical representations of the female body

Please send proposals to discuss your research (around 300 words) before October 30 to Montserrat Cabré and Teresa Ortiz-Gómez at: 10thEES@gmail.com

As in previous sessions, this ESS is structured in four key-note lectures and a research workshop. The keynote lectures will be delivered by four outstanding scholars covering areas such as sexual practices, the language of physiology, visual representations and feminist definitions of health expertise.

The ESS is envisaged as a space for junior scholars to discuss their current work-in-progress with colleagues in a creative and supportive environment. The workshop will be organized in three thematic paper sessions and one poster session. All contributions – in both paper and poster format – will be commented by participants, lecturers and organizers of the School. Sessions and discussions will be conducted in English.

The ESS „Handling the body, taking control: Technologies of the gendered body“ is open to graduate students, early career scholars, professionals, and activists concerned about past and present approaches to the gendered body and the analysis of the epistemological frameworks that feminism has developped to analyse them.

A limited number of grants will be available for graduate students and early career researchers.

Source: H-Net Notifications