Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy Past and Present - Rilegato

Davis, Isabel

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0262049481 ISBN 13: 9780262049481

Casa editrice: The MIT Press, 2025

Riassunto

A fascinating and beautifully illustrated account of trying to conceive in both the past and the present.


Inspired by the author’s own experience, Conceiving Histories brings together history, personal memoir, and illustration to investigate the culturally hidden experience of trying to conceive. In elegant, engaging prose, Isabel Davis explores the combination of myth, fantasy, science, and pseudo-science that the (un)reproductive body encounters in pursuit of a viable pregnancy. The book chronicles the trying-to-conceive lifecycle arc from sex education at school, through the desire to be a parent, into the specifics of trying and struggling to conceive. It also looks back at conception throughout history to open a new vista on what we live with today.

A central argument of Davis’s is that historical people lived with the unknown just like we do but were more explicitly able to acknowledge it. In an age of assistive reproductive technologies, the act of embracing uncertainty seems difficult. Although the topic of not conceiving is potentially painful, this is not a grim book; more than grief, it is motivated by curiosity, wonder, compassion, and even humor. With 108 full-color illustrations, Conceiving Histories is also a beautiful material object, an intentionally playful antidote and supplement to Google—the resort of so many embroiled in fertility challenges.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Isabel Davis leads a research theme on Collections and Culture at the Natural History Museum in London, and she is Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading.

Anna Burel is a London-based artist and illustrator whose artwork encompasses textiles, sculpture, drawing, photography, and collage. Her work investigates the female bodily experience through an exploration of history and traditional storytelling like myth and fairytale.

Isabel and Anna have worked together since 2015, holding an exhibition of their work in London in 2017.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: The MIT Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0262049481
• ISBN 13: 9780262049481
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Disegnatore: Burel Anna
• Numero di pagine: 360
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
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