Tuesday, April 9, 3:30pm (Sheldon Auditorium) -- HMED Linda & Charles Wilson Lecture
Professor Lara Freidenfelds, "Perfect Pregnancies and Mourned Miscarriages: A History of Modern Childbearing"
Freidenfelds offers a far-reaching look at the rise of our current childbearing culture from its earliest glimmers in the Revolutionary era to today. She concludes with suggestions for how we might set realistic and humane expectations for childbearing, and accept the inevitable imperfections of this most human of endeavors. Lara Freidenfelds is a historian of sex, reproduction, and women’s health in America, and the author of The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America. She blogs with the historian’s perspective on childbearing, parenting, sex, and health. She holds a PhD in the history of science from Harvard. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.