The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History, 1st ed. 2017 Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives

This ground-breaking, interdisciplinary volume provides an overdue assessment of how infertility has been understood, treated and experienced in different times and places. It brings together scholars from disciplines including history, literature, psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences to create the first large-scale review of recent research on the history of infertility. Through exploring an unparalleled range of chronological periods and geographical regions, it develops historical perspectives on an apparently transhistorical experience. It shows how experiences of infertility, access to treatment, and medical perspectives on this ?condition? have been mediated by social, political, and cultural discourses. The handbook reflects on and interrogates different approaches to the history of infertility, including the potential of cross-disciplinary perspectives and the uses of different kinds of historical source material, and includes lists of research resources to aid teachers and researchers. It is an essential ?go-to? point for anyone interested in infertility and its history. 

Chapter 19 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

1. Introduction. Infertility in History: Approaches, Contexts and Perspectives; Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis.- Section 1: Defining the ‘Problem’: Perspectives on Infertility.-  2. Introduction: Defining the ‘Problem’: Perspectives on Infertility; Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis.- 3. Great Expectations: Infertility, Disability, and Possibility; Sally Bishop Shigley.- 4. Whose Fault is it Anyway? Plant Infertility in Antiquity; Laurence M.V. Totelin.- 5. From ‘Fructification’ to ‘Insemination’: Nomenclature and the Practice of Artificial Insemination; Bridget Gurtler.- 6. Silences: Coping with Infertility in Nineteenth-Century Germany; Christina Benninghaus.- 7. Oral History and Women’s Accounts of Infertility in Postwar England; Angela Davis.- Section 2: The Body Politic and the Infertile Body.- 8. Introduction: The Body Politic and the Infertile Body; Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis.- 9. Sterility and Sovereignty: The Succession Crisis of the Late Valois Monarchy; Penny Roberts.- 10. ‘If slendernesse be the cause of unfruitfulnesse; you must nourish and fatten the body’: Thin Bodies and Infertility in Early Modern England; Sarah Toulalan.- 11. Obstacles to the Establishment of a Policy to Combat Infertility in France, c. 1920-1950; Fabrice Cahen.-  12. ‘Phantom Fathers’ and ‘Test Tube Babies’: Debates on Marriage, Infertility and Artificial Insemination in the British Media, c.1957-60; Hayley Andrew.- 13. ‘She gets the taunts and bears the blame’: Infertility in Contemporary India; Daniel J.R. Grey.- Section 3: Situating Infertility in Medicine.-  14. Introduction: Situating Infertility in Medicine; Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran.- 15. Men’s Responses to Infertility in Medieval England; Catherine Rider.-16. The Ancient Medical Sources in the Chapters about Sterility of Rodrigo de Castro’s De universa mulierum medicina; Cristina Santos Pinheiro.- 17. Female Impotence or Obstruction of the Womb? French Doctors Picturing Female Sterility in the 1820s; Sophie Vasset.- 18. ‘The Great Foe to the Reproduction of the Race’: Diagnosing and Treating Venereal Disease-Induced Infertility, 1880-1914; Anne Hanley.-  19. A Tragedy as Old as History’: Medical Responses to Infertility in 1950s Britain; Gayle Davis.- Section 4: Agency and Invisibility in Constructions of Infertility.- 20. Introduction: Agency and Infertility in Constructions of Infertility; Tracey Loughran and Gayle Davis.- 21. The Psychology of Infertility in Reproductive Medicine and Healthcare, c.1940s-2000s; Sofia Gameiro and Jacky Boivin.- 22. The Interplay between Infertility and Adoption in Policy and Practice in Twentieth-Century Australia; Shurlee Swain.-  23. Conditions of Illusion: Agency, Feminism and Cultural Representations of Infertility in Britain, c. 1960-1980; Tracey Loughran.-  24. The Janus Face of Infertility in the Global North and South: Reviewing Feminist Contributions to the Debate; Sara MacBride-Stewart and Rachel Simon-Kumar.- 25. Being Paid to Produce Eggs and Sperm: Gender, Commodification, and the Bodily Experiences of Gamete Donors; Rene Almeling.- 26. Representations of Ageing and Infertility in the Twenty-First-Century British Press; Virpi Ylänne.- Section 5: Reproductive Technologies and Imagined Futures.- 27. Introduction: Reproductive Technologies and Imagined Futures; Gayle Davis and Tracey Loughran.- 28. Americans and Assisted Reproduction: The Past as Prologue; Margaret Marsh.- 29. In Vitro Fertilization, Infertility and the ‘Right to a Child’ in 1970s and 1980s Britain; Duncan Wilson.-  30. ‘The Authority’s Anti-Breeding Campaign’: State-Imposed Infertility in British Reprodystopia; Fran Bigman.- 31. Infertility, Ethics, and the Future: An Exploration; Daniela Cutas.

Gayle Davis is Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and has published extensively in the social history of medicine since c.1880. Her published work includes the books ‘The Cruel Madness of Love’: Sex, Syphilis and Psychiatry in Scotland, 1880-1930 (2008) and The Sexual State: Sexuality and Scottish Governance, 1950-80 (with Roger Davidson, 2012).

Tracey Loughran is Reader in History at the University of Essex, UK. Her research explores gender, medicine and psychology in twentieth-century Britain. Her major work to date is Shell-Shock and Medical Culture in First World War Britain (2016).

Reflects on and interrogates different approaches to the history of infertility, including the potential of cross-disciplinary perspectives, and the uses of different kinds of historical source material.

Develops historical perspectives on an apparently transhistorical experience through by exploring different chronological periods and geographical regions.

Considers the ways in which subjective experiences of infertility, access to treatment, and medical perspectives on this ‘condition’ have been mediated by social, political and cultural discourses, including those around gender and the family.