The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives

Description

This ground-breaking, interdisciplinary volume provides an overdue assessment of how infertility has been understood, treated and experienced in different times and places. It brings together scholars from disciplines including history, literature, psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences to create the first large-scale review of recent research on the history of infertility. Through exploring an unparalleled range of chronological periods and geographical regions, it develops historical perspectives on an apparently transhistorical experience. It shows how experiences of infertility, access to treatment, and medical perspectives on this ‘condition’ have been mediated by social, political, and cultural discourses. The handbook reflects on and interrogates different approaches to the history of infertility, including the potential of cross-disciplinary perspectives and the uses of different kinds of historical source material, and includes lists of research resources to aid teachers and researchers. It is an essential ‘go-to’ point for anyone interested in infertility and its history. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction: Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives (Tracey Loughran, Gayle Davis)....Pages 1-25 Front Matter ....Pages 27-27 Introduction: Defining the ‘Problem’: Perspectives on Infertility (Tracey Loughran, Gayle Davis)....Pages 29-35 Great Expectations: Infertility, Disability, and Possibility (Sally Bishop Shigley)....Pages 37-55 Whose Fault is it Anyway? Plant Infertility in Antiquity (Laurence M.V. Totelin)....Pages 57-75 From ‘Fructification’ to ‘Insemination’: Nomenclature and the Practice of Artificial Insemination (Bridget Gurtler)....Pages 77-98 Silences: Coping with Infertility in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Christina Benninghaus)....Pages 99-122 Oral History and Women’s Accounts of Infertility in Postwar England (Angela Davis)....Pages 123-140 Front Matter ....Pages 141-141 Introduction: The Body Politic and the Infertile Body (Tracey Loughran, Gayle Davis)....Pages 143-149 Sterility and Sovereignty: The Succession Crisis of the Late Valois Monarchy (Penny Roberts)....Pages 151-169 ‘If slendernesse be the cause of unfruitfulnesse; you must nourish and fatten the body’: Thin Bodies and Infertility in Early Modern England (Sarah Toulalan)....Pages 171-197 Obstacles to the Establishment of a Policy to Combat Infertility in France, c. 1920–1950 (Fabrice Cahen)....Pages 199-219 ‘Phantom Fathers’ and ‘Test-Tube Babies’: Debates on Marriage, Infertility, and Artificial Insemination in the British Media, c. 1957–60 (Hayley Andrew)....Pages 221-239 ‘She Gets the Taunts and Bears the Blame’: Infertility in Contemporary India (Daniel J.R. Grey)....Pages 241-262 Front Matter ....Pages 263-263 Introduction: Situating Infertility in Medicine (Gayle Davis, Tracey Loughran)....Pages 265-271 Men’s Responses to Infertility in Late Medieval England (Catherine Rider)....Pages 273-290 The Ancient Medical Sources in the Chapters about Sterility of Rodrigo de Castro’s De universa mulierum medicina (Cristina Santos Pinheiro)....Pages 291-310 Female Impotence or Obstruction of the Womb? French Doctors Picturing Female Sterility in the 1820s (Sophie Vasset)....Pages 311-333 ‘The Great Foe to the Reproduction of the Race’: Diagnosing and Treating Infertility Caused by Venereal Diseases, 1880–1914 (Anne Hanley)....Pages 335-358 ‘A Tragedy as Old as History’: Medical Responses to Infertility and Artificial Insemination by Donor in 1950s Britain (Gayle Davis)....Pages 359-381 Front Matter ....Pages 383-383 Introduction: Agency and Invisibility in Constructions of Infertility (Tracey Loughran, Gayle Davis)....Pages 385-391 The Psychology of Infertility in Reproductive Medicine and Healthcare, c. 1940s–2000s (Sofia Gameiro, Jacky Boivin)....Pages 393-413 The Interplay Between Infertility and Adoption in Policy and Practice in Twentieth-Century Australia (Shurlee Swain)....Pages 415-430 Conditions of Illusion: Agency, Feminism, and Cultural Representations of Infertility in Britain, c. 1960–80 (Tracey Loughran)....Pages 431-459 The Janus Face of Infertility in the Global North and South: Reviewing Feminist Contributions to the Debate (Sara MacBride-Stewart, Rachel Simon-Kumar)....Pages 461-489 Being Paid to Produce Eggs and Sperm: Gender, Commodification, and the Bodily Experiences of Gamete Donors (Rene Almeling)....Pages 491-507 Representations of Ageing and Infertility in the Twenty-First-Century British Press (Virpi Ylänne)....Pages 509-535 Front Matter ....Pages 537-537 Introduction: Reproductive Technologies and Imagined Futures (Gayle Davis, Tracey Loughran)....Pages 539-544 Americans and Assisted Reproduction: The Past as Prologue (Margaret Marsh)....Pages 545-564 In Vitro Fertilization, Infertility, and the ‘Right to a Child’ in 1970s and 1980s Britain (Duncan Wilson)....Pages 565-586 ‘The Authority’s Anti-Breeding Campaign’: State-Imposed Infertility in British Reprodystopia (Fran Bigman)....Pages 587-607 Infertility, Ethics, and the Future: An Exploration (Daniela Cutas)....Pages 609-624 Back Matter ....Pages 625-663