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SUMMARY:Negotiated Concept(ion)s: Narratives of Artificial Insemination\, 
 1945-1960 - Bridget Gurtler (History\, Rutgers University\, US)
DTSTART:20100511T160000Z
DTEND:20100511T173000Z
UID:TALK24260@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Zeynep Gurtin-Broadbent
DESCRIPTION:In the late 1940s and the 1950s in the U.S. and UK\, physician
 s\, patients\, and scientists formed interrelated and sometimes competing 
 narratives about artificial insemination (AI).  At this critical moment du
 ring which many of the modern boundaries and definitions of assisted repro
 duction were born\,\n\nAmerican and British mothers\, fathers\, physicians
  and donors all worked to articulate what artificial insemination meant to
  them.  They struggled to express their personal and religious understandi
 ngs of technology and reproduction\, and to understand what AI meant for p
 ostwar societies concerned with the reintegration of soldiers\, the rebuil
 ding of families\, and transformative possibilities of technology.  This s
 eminar explores how particular sites of ideological\, scientific\, and bod
 ily conflict arose between users and practitioners of AI during this perio
 d.  Taking center stage in the story of artificial insemination\, the semi
 nar also focuses on how the reproductive bodies of disabled veterans becam
 e interwoven into technological and rehabilitative narratives about artifi
 cial insemination after their return home from World War II.\n\nHistories 
 of reproduction have tended to portray artificial insemination as a “low
 -tech” development of small historical importance—of secondary importa
 nce next to more “high-tech” and bodily invasive forms of assisted rep
 roduction—including IVF\, surrogacy\, and egg donation that emerged in t
 he later decades. These narratives have often presented AI history as defi
 ned by negative social reception.  Most of those conclusions\, I argue\, a
 re misguided -- principally because they focused on these scientific disco
 veries in biology by privileging the physicians' perspectives. Using a var
 iety of archival sources from birth control and fertility clinics\, newspa
 pers\, film\, radio\, medical and popular journals\, as well as letters an
 d insights of users themselves\, this seminar will instead foreground pati
 ent and donor narratives and agency from the post-World War II era.  In my
  broader work\, which informs this presentation\, I also explore how patie
 nt’s perspectives on race\, gender\, and medicine integrally shaped thei
 r pursuit of parenthood.\n\nBy taking this new look at artificial insemina
 tion\, the presentation raises a larger methodological question about how 
 the sources we use to make our histories of reproduction influence interpr
 etations about users and practitioners\, and inform our ideas about bodies
 \, sexual practices\, social actors\, and visibility.  For example\, using
  these popular sources\, we can see how the definition of who is an AI pat
 ient (commonly perceived of as women) can shift.  Male bodies re-surface i
 n the post-war story of infertility as visible actors.  We also see how th
 e concept of using AI as a means to aid conception was fought out in the p
 opular media\, including in fiction and film\, and how the practice took o
 n new significance by creating new geographies of knowledge.
LOCATION:CRASSH Seminar Room 17 Mill Lane
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