Article Summary by Kate Schnur This article explores the representations of different experiences of “unmotherhood” are represented in literature of the twentieth century. As this special issue explores the conditions of modernity that shape maternity, I ask how are the conditions of living outside of motherhood similarly shaped by those same conditions? I look to […]
Category: Journal Announcements
‘Mrs. Don’t Care’: Refusing Modern Black Motherhood in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand
Article Summary by Matty Hemming This essay offers an analysis of Nella Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance novel, Quicksand, within the context of Larsen’s career as a nurse. I consider what thinking about the author’s experience of public health nursing and nurse training in the early twentieth-century does to our understanding of her novel’s portrayal of reproductive […]
Smoothies, Bone Broth, and Fitspo: The Historicity of TikTok Postpartum Bounce-Back Culture
Article Summary by Bethany L. Johnson, Margaret M. Quinlan and Audrey Curry Have you ever implemented dietary, wellness or health advice from a TikTok video? You probably aren’t alone. In this study, we explore the health, wellness, and fitness content on TikTok with a focus on a particular phase in life—the postpartum period, and we […]
Motherhood, Medicine and Magazines in Interwar Vienna: The Case of Die Mutter (The Mother, 1924–1926)
Article Summary by Alys X. George Whether we admit it or not, these days we all rely on “Doctor Google” for information about our bodies, health, and medical issues. But what did people do in the past? This article investigates how Austrian women in the 1920s accessed medical knowledge about (impending) motherhood. A grassroots network […]
From the Womb to the World: A Study of Pregnancy Narratives by Celebrity Moms in India
Article Summary by Pratyusha Pramanik and Ajit K Mishra This article delves into how celebrity moms in India are crafting their public images by sharing their pregnancy experiences publicly. Even though motherhood is highly glorified in India, women often have little control over their choice to become a mother and how to become a mother. […]
The Right Time: Women, Medicine and Maternal Age in 1980s Aotearoa New Zealand
Article Summary by Charlotte Greenhalgh ‘The Right Time’ draws on unique, grassroots survey research on New Zealand women’s decisions to delay childbearing and become parents after the age of 30. These 1980s studies and their archived research papers spotlight participants’ determination to time childbearing to coincide with financial stability, strong romantic partnerships, and sufficient personal […]
“The Highest in Each Class was a Twilight Baby”: Scientific Motherhood, Twilight Sleep and the Eugenics Movement in McClure’s Magazine
Article Summary by Jerika Sanderson and Heather A. Love This article investigates the depiction of twilight sleep in McClure’s Magazine. Twilight sleep was a drug cocktail and medical procedure popularized during the mid-1910s in the United States as a way to reduce or eliminate women’s pain during childbirth; it became an important symbol of agency […]
#Headlesspreggos: Challenging Visual Imaginaries of Pregnancy and Reproduction
Article Summary by Alana Cattapan and Danielle Mastromatteo Images of headless pregnant women—what we call “headless preggos”—are frequently used to illustrate online news content on pregnancy and reproduction. In our article, “#Headlesspreggos: Challenging visual imaginaries of pregnancy and reproduction,” we explore the meaning of these images through our experiences documenting headless preggos on Twitter from […]
Motherhood, Wet-Nursing and Nation: Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Medical Perspectives
Article Summary by Tiago Fernandes Maranhão The paper explores how doctors in nineteenth-century Brazil viewed women’s roles, especially in terms of having and raising children. It looks at their ideas about pregnancy, breastfeeding, and the use of enslaved wet nurses during a time when the country was trying to modernize. It also examines issues like […]
The Big Heroine Genre: Motherhood and the Maternal Body in Postsocialist Chinese Television
Article summary by Chelsea Wenzhu Xu This article explores the “big heroine” drama genre, a new type of television show in China that tells powerful and dramatic stories of urban women. By examining this genre through multiple lenses—cultural studies, Marxist theory, feminist film and media studies, and medical humanities—the article analyzes how these shows critique […]