"You can imagine my horror when I felt a movement in the body …", wrote one mother to the British birth control advocate Marie Stopes in 1926, describing the internal sensation of quickening that confirmed to her that she was pregnant. Her letter lies within an archive of correspondence in which people from all over the UK told Stopes of their experiences of sexuality, maternity, and healthcare. Many letters from poor and working-class mothers lament birth injuries that had led to chronic pain and disability, and describe undernourished and sickly children, too numerous for the family to raise. A common complaint is that doctors and nurses advise strictly NO MORE PREGNANCIES but withhold information about how this might be achieved. Most letters end with pleas to Stopes for advice and for access to modern contraceptives.
When Stopes published the bestselling sex and marriage guide "Married Love" in 1918, the general population in Britain had little anatomical knowledge or sexual education. Contraception was difficult to access and a taboo topic. Criminalised abortion bore the risk of injury and death. Dr Marie Stopes (1880–1958), an upper-middle class woman scientist, wanted to improve the situations of women and their families by destigmatizing contraception and making it widely available. She was also committed to eugenics, a now discredited, pseudo-scientific theory that human populations can be genetically and morally improved if only the ‘fit’ members of society have children.
This course introduces you to the discourses of sex, contraception, and eugenics in 1920s Britain, when the wide introduction of modern contraceptives would literally change people’s lives, especially those with uteruses. We will consider Stopes’ feminism and eugenics in the context of increasing racialisation, the new science of demographics, and anxieties around the strength of the Empire.
You will gain an understanding of the political theories of biopolitics and necropolitics in their applications to the politics of (reproductive) healthcare on a population scale. As theorized by Michel Foucault, the regime of biopolitics is aimed at administering, optimising and multiplying life and all its processes; it describes the form of management at the root of modern governmentality (Foucault 1976: 137). The state’s practices of regulation, or biopower, are directed towards the individual body, which contains “the mechanics of life” (ibid, 1939).
This course will:
- familiarise you with transdisciplinary research
- employ object-led and research-led teaching
- emphasise historical artefacts and imagery
- introduce you to primary sources from the 1920s, such as letters and pamphlets
- develop your critical analysis skills in relation to the complex and contested topic of reproductive healthcare
- develop your understanding of modernity in Britain, especially with regard to women’s lives, health, sexuality, and feminisms
- develop your understanding of eugenics historically, as well as sensitising you to its ideologies as they resurface today
- develop your discussion, critical thinking, group work, and writing skills
Please note the emotive and/or politically charged nature of topics that will be raised in this course as per the above description. While they are not the focus of the course, partner abuse, rape, miscarriage, and child loss will come up in readings and discussion. Participants in this course are asked to treat these topics and each other with care and respect.
Image credit: Lamberts Prorace Ltd. product catalogue, mid-1940s, Wellcome Library, London. Photograph by Nora Heidorn.
- Lehrende*r: Heidorn Nora