September 14, 2007
Clark University to host lecture on the Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves
Worcester, Mass. - Clark University will host a lecture, "The Making of ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves'; How Feminism Travels Across Borders" at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 3, in the Higgins University Center, Grace Conference Room, 950 Main Street.
In this lecture, Kathy Davis, senior researcher at the Institute of History and Culture at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, will explore the world-wide travels of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," showing how the book was transformed in the process of its many border crossings.
Davis has published extensively on contemporary feminist approaches to the body, interaction between physicians and women patients, cultural constructions of beauty and beauty practices, and the political and ethnical dimensions of surgical technologies. She has held visiting research fellowships at Radcliffe College, Columbia University, and Wesleyan University, as well as visiting professorships at Wellesley College, the University of Umea in Sweden, and the University of Helsinki and University of Tampere, both in Finland.
"This well-known feminist classic book on women and health not only had an enormous impact on feminism in the U.S., but it has been taken up, translated and adapted by women across the globe," said Davis.
"Our Bodies, Ourselves" has been translated and/or adapted into 19 languages. Recent editions include Armenian, Bulgarian, and Serbian versions. "Sacrificing Ourselves for Love" was recently released in Japanese, and other foreign adaptations are in progress. The book, first published in 1970, is described in an Encyclopaedia Britannica article as "a groundbreaking publication in its expressed goal of dispelling widespread ignorance about the female body and women's health issues."
The book's authors, members of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective, supplemented scant or unavailable information about women's health and medical issues, and began writing articles on topics such as sexuality, birth control, abortion, pregnancy, and menopause, and incorporated personal experiences with their research findings. The project developed into a book, and the first edition sold several million copies. (Subsequent editions were heavily revised and expanded with chapters discussing issues such as body image, physical fitness, lesbianism, aging, AIDS, new reproductive technologies, and violence against women.)
This event is co-sponsored by Women's Studies, Communication and Culture, the Department of International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE) and the Psychology Department at Clark. It is free and open to the public.
For more information, call 508-793-7358.