Flyer - School of History

Wednesday 6 May 2015 4:15–5:30 pm
School of History Seminar Series
Speaker: Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck College, University of London & ANU School of
History Allan Martin Visitor 2015
McDonald Room, Menzies Library, ANU
This paper explores the rhetoric, performance, and
practice of childbirth in the long-twentieth century.
In modern history, there have been two periods of
revolution in connection with childbirth – and both
concerned pain. The first is the anaesthetics
revolution of the late 1840s; the invention of ether
and chloroform. The second is what I call the
‘aesthesiological’ revolution of the long 1950s. As
opposed to anaesthesiology, or the rendering
Childbirth (1963). Wellcome Trust Library,
London.
unconscious to feeling (chloroform and ether of the
1840s),
aesthesiology
is
the
celebration
of
emotional reactions to stimuli in lived experience. What do these two revolutions
suggest about ideas about the body, suffering, and gender?
Joanna Bourke is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and
Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). She the author of 11 books, the most recent
being Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present (2007), What it Means to be
Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present (2011), The Story of Pain: From
Prayer to Painkillers (2014), and Wounding the World: How Military Violence and
War-Play are Invading our Lives (2014). Most of her research focuses on violence,
war, the emotions, suffering, and gender.
ANU College of
Arts & Social Sciences
ALL WELCOME
Please direct enquiries to [email protected]
School of History Seminar Series
‘Unnatural’: Pain and Childbirth, 1840s to the
Present