Birth Figures

With Birth Figures, Whiteley adds much to our historical understanding of pregnancy and childbirth. Moving beyond old historical narratives of the conflict between male midwives-with their instruments and interventionist approach-and traditional female midwives, who assisted in the natural process of birth, Whiteley presents a more complex and nuanced story of shifting understandings among both men and women and new skill sets required of both male and female birth attendants. The book also adds to the growing literature on the relationship between art and science and the creation of 'visual languages' to convey knowledge of different subjects. -- Kathleen Crowther, University of Oklahoma The history of midwifery is transformed by this first sustained analysis of printed drawings showing birth presentations in pregnant wombs. Recovering midwives' pictorial practice while putting anatomy in its place, Whiteley reconstructs how copying drove innovation and viewers made meanings. Her appealing book thus extends reproductive, gender, and visual studies, as well as histories of art, medicine, and the body. -- Nick Hopwood, University of Cambridge Whiteley's work, at the intersection of medical and art history, beautifully illuminates the multiple meanings of images of unborn children in early modern Europe. She offers fresh, sophisticated, and nuanced interpretations of images that have puzzled me for years! -- Mary E. Fissell, Johns Hopkins University In this fascinating porthole into English pregnancy culture in the 16th to 18th centuries, cherubic representations of fetuses in transparent wombs greet bewildered readers... By recasting birth figures as evolving feminist iconography, Whiteley places these artifacts in the context of contemporary debates over reproductive rights. * Scientific American *