- Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, AlumnusHanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Society, Department Memberadd
- Medical Humanities, History of Medicine, History of Sexuality, Intellectual History, Theory of History, Interdisciplinarity, and 50 moreScience-Humanities Interdisciplinarity, History of Psychiatry, Modern Europe, Transgender Studies, History Of Psychoanalysis, Humanities, Thanatology, Masochism, Waste, Violence, Torture, History, History of Biology, Historiography, Biologism, Polymath Erudition, Polymath, Pain, Scatology, Neuroscience, Necropolitics, Music, Modernity, Masculinity, Technologies of the Self, Biochemistry, Biology, Biomedical Sciences, Cultural History, Cultural History of War, French Studies, Gender, Historicism, History Of Cultural Theory, History Of Sexology, History Of Sexuality (Sexuality And Chivalry Courtly Love), History Of Theory, Nineteenth Century Studies, Gut Microbiome, Microbiota-gut-brain axis, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Studies, Medieval History, Early Christianity, Intellectual and cultural history, Call for Papers, Cultural Studies, French and Francophone Studies, German History, French History, and Ageing, Women's Studiesedit
- I am Associate Dean of Research and Associate Professor of History & Medical Humanities for the School of Humanities ... moreI am Associate Dean of Research and Associate Professor of History & Medical Humanities for the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, where I also serve as the elected academic member of the Board of Trustees and as Chair of the University's Professoriate Leadership Group. I am also an interdisciplinary research mentor and a core member of the Translational Health Institute (THRI): https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/staff_profiles/WSU/associate_professor_alison_downham_moore
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/thri/team/members/alison_m_downham_moore/
I am an elected Fellow of the UK Royal Historical Society (RHS), an HEA Senior Teaching Fellow, and an Alumni Research Fellow of both the Marie Curie Association of the European Union and of the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg, Germany. I am an international peer-reviewer of online teaching design with Quality Matters. I am the Managing Editor of Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, published by ANU Press, and I was recently appointed as a Production Editor in nineteenth-century history for H-France Reviews.
My main current research project, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery grant is called Sexual Ageing in the History of Medicine:
https://sexualageinginthehistoryofmedicine.org/
My latest book, The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing was published by Oxford University Press in 2022: https://sexualageinginthehistoryofmedicine.org/home/the-french-invention-of-menopause-and-the-medicalisation-of-womens-ageing-a-history/
I am now completing on a co-authored book entitled Gendered Ageing in the Intercultural History of Biomedicine which examines Latin, English, French, German and American medical histories of hygiene, gynaecology, gerontology, endocrinology, psychiatry, oncology and epidemiology referring to sex-differentiated diseases and disorders of older bodies.
I am also involved in interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborative projects on the history and culture of digestive health and medical hygiene, on the historical writing of Michel Foucault, and on the history and anthropology of gynaecological surgeries.
I am a graduate of the University of Sydney (PhD 2002), and the University of Melbourne (Grad Cert in Tertiary Education Management 2023) and hold micro-credentials in a variety of different management and supervision-related subjects. I have previously held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Sydney (Usyd), Queensland (UQ), Wollongong and UTS. I have mostly taught modern European history, history of sexuality, and historical theory, but also French language and culture, comparative nationalism, and international studies.
In February-March 2021 I was a resident of the Chateau du Fey, Feytopia communal living home in Burgundy, France - and hope to return there again! From January-February 2021 I was a Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study (FRIAS) Alumni Fellow. Throughout 2019-2020 I held both a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Senior Research Fellowship at FRIAS, and another Research Fellowship at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg (HWK) in Niedersachsen, Germany.
These days I am resident on beautiful Gundungurra Ngurra in the Blue Mountains, Australia where I am a volunteer firefighter, Bushcare volunteer and WIRES native animal rescuer. With Dr Russell Downham, I am creating a creative/intellectual cohabitation household in Lawson NSW.
I welcome meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration and have previously collaborated with scholars in literary studies, cultural studies, philosophy, politics, geography, microbial ecology, anthropology and sociology.
My research specialisations are:
Global history of medicine and health; interdisciplinary medical humanities; Modern European history; history of gynaecology; intellectual history; long history of gender, sexuality and of the sexes; philosophy, history and theory of historiography.
My professional skills are in historical research, higher education teaching, higher-degree thesis supervision, academic mentoring, journal editing and production management, higher education governance/management/administration, and not-for-profit board directing.edit - Dr Iain Cameron (deceased)edit
Use and share this 30% off discount code for my 2016 book published by Lexington books: Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology. The notion of sexual sadism emerged from nineteenth-century alienist attempts... more
Use and share this 30% off discount code for my 2016 book published by Lexington books: Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology.
The notion of sexual sadism emerged from nineteenth-century alienist attempts to imagine the pleasure of the torturer or mass killer. This was a time in which sexuality was mapped to social progress, so that perversions were always related either to degeneration or decadence. These ideas were internalized in later Freudian views of the drives within the self, and of their repression under the demands of modern European civilization. Sadism was always presented as the barbarous past that lurked within each of us, ready to burst forth into murderous violence, crime, anti-Semitism, and finally genocide. This idea maintained its currency in European thought after the Second World War as Freudian-influenced accounts of the history of philosophy configured the Marquis de Sade as a kind of Kantian "superego" in a framework that viewed the Western Enlightenment as unraveled by its own inner demons. In this way, a straight line was imagined from the late eighteenth century to the Holocaust. These ideas have had an ongoing legacy in debates about sexual perversion, feminism, genocide representation, and historical memory of Nazism. However, recent genocide research has massively debunked assumptions that perpetrators of mass violence are especially sexually motivated in their cruelty. This book considers how the late twentieth-century imagination eroticized Nazism for its own ends, but also how it has been informed by nineteenth-century formulations of the idea of mass violence as a sexual problem.
The notion of sexual sadism emerged from nineteenth-century alienist attempts to imagine the pleasure of the torturer or mass killer. This was a time in which sexuality was mapped to social progress, so that perversions were always related either to degeneration or decadence. These ideas were internalized in later Freudian views of the drives within the self, and of their repression under the demands of modern European civilization. Sadism was always presented as the barbarous past that lurked within each of us, ready to burst forth into murderous violence, crime, anti-Semitism, and finally genocide. This idea maintained its currency in European thought after the Second World War as Freudian-influenced accounts of the history of philosophy configured the Marquis de Sade as a kind of Kantian "superego" in a framework that viewed the Western Enlightenment as unraveled by its own inner demons. In this way, a straight line was imagined from the late eighteenth century to the Holocaust. These ideas have had an ongoing legacy in debates about sexual perversion, feminism, genocide representation, and historical memory of Nazism. However, recent genocide research has massively debunked assumptions that perpetrators of mass violence are especially sexually motivated in their cruelty. This book considers how the late twentieth-century imagination eroticized Nazism for its own ends, but also how it has been informed by nineteenth-century formulations of the idea of mass violence as a sexual problem.
Research Interests:
OPEN ACCESS - please go to the OUP website to download your free PDF copy:... more
OPEN ACCESS - please go to the OUP website to download your free PDF copy:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-french-invention-of-menopause-and-the-medicalisation-of-womens-ageing-9780192842916?cc=au&lang=en&#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20menopause%20was,professional%20identities%20in%20postrevolutionary%20biomedicine.
.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-french-invention-of-menopause-and-the-medicalisation-of-womens-ageing-9780192842916?cc=au&lang=en&#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20menopause%20was,professional%20identities%20in%20postrevolutionary%20biomedicine.
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Research Interests:
This book considers the historical and cultural origins of the gut-brain relationship now evidenced in numerous scientific research fields. Bringing together eleven scholars with wide interdisciplinary expertise, the volume examines... more
This book considers the historical and cultural origins of the gut-brain relationship now evidenced in numerous scientific research fields. Bringing together eleven scholars with wide interdisciplinary expertise, the volume examines literal and metaphorical digestion in different spheres of nineteenth-century life. Digestive health is examined in three sections in relation to science, politics and literature during the period, focusing on Northern America, Europe and Australia. Using diverse methodologies, the essays demonstrate that the long nineteenth century was an important moment in the Western understanding and perception of the gastroenterological system and its relation to the mind in the sense of cognition, mental wellbeing, and the emotions. This collection explores how medical breakthroughs are often historically preceded by intuitive models imagined throughout a range of cultural productions.
Research Interests:
Sadism as fascistic, masochism as postmodern - these are the sexual myths associated with modernity which this book critiques via an historical account of their discursive emergence. Sexual Myths of Modernity reconsiders the intellectual... more
Sadism as fascistic, masochism as postmodern - these are the sexual myths associated with modernity which this book critiques via an historical account of their discursive emergence. Sexual Myths of Modernity reconsiders the intellectual milieux in which the Viennese psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing formulated the neologisms 'Sadismus' and 'Masochismus', and presents a revised understanding of the character of Sigmund Freud's uptake of these terms. The central motif in such definitions of perversion is the binding of sex to historical teleology - the notion that perversions can be aligned to progress, civilization and barbarism. This motif thereafter haunted a wide range of intellectual attempts to account for torture, genocide and war. Sexual Myths of Modernity traces an intellectual genealogy from the work of Krafft-Ebing, to that of Freud, to that of the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno/Horkheimer, and then to the plethora of theoretical, literary and cinematic visions of Nazism as sadomasochistic generated since the nineteen sixties. Alongside such visions is an equally teleological attempt to recuperate masochism as an ironic postmodern opposite to sadism. The vision of Nazi perpetrators as sadists, along with the account of masochism as postmodern transgression, have become some of the most problematic and widely diffused sexual myths of our time. But their embedded assumption of a relation between violence, history and perversion owe everything to nineteenth-century habits of thinking.
Research Interests:
This is the Table of Contents and Introductory chapter of my edited book of 2012.
Research Interests: Cultural History, French Literature, French History, Gender History, Nineteenth Century Studies, and 15 morePolitical Culture, History of Sexuality, Political History, French colonialism, Twentieth Century History and Culture, Medieval France, French Politics, Gender and Politics, Early Modern France, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, Political symbols, French Cultural Studies, French and Francophone Studies, French Nationalism, and History of Colonialism
Frigidity: An Intellectual History is the first major study of this curiously neglected term in the history of sexuality. It represents an exciting new approach to culturally informed intellectual history and is essential reading for... more
Frigidity: An Intellectual History is the first major study of this curiously neglected term in the history of sexuality. It represents an exciting new approach to culturally informed intellectual history and is essential reading for students, scholars, and anyone interested in the way notions of feminine desire and its failure have been conceived across time. With a primary focus on France, it also considers the broader European and transatlantic scope of sexual coldness, frigidity, anaphrosisia and vaginismus, considering how ideas migrate from one cultural context to another. It is a study that ranges across seventeenth-century canon law, eighteenth and nineteenth-century medicine, nineteenth-century marital advice, literary works, and psychiatric theories; twentieth-century psychoanalysis, feminism and sexology. Though the word 'frigidity' may have fallen into disuse among specialists, there is now an array of new terms with which psychiatrists and sexologists continue to theorise sexual lack. This book puts both old and new into historical context.
Book Description:
A journey across four centuries, showing how notions of sexual coldness and frigidity have been thought about by legal, medical, psychiatric, psychoanalytic and literary writers
About the Authors:
PETER CRYLE is author of Geometry in the Boudoir (1996), The Telling of the Act (2002), and La Crise du plaisir, 1740-1830 (2003). He also co-edited Libertine Enlightenment with Lisa O'Connell (2004) and Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle (2008) with Christopher Forth.
ALISON MOORE is a Scholar of Modern European Intellectual History. She teaches and researches in International Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Sexual Myths of Modernity; Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology (2012).
Book Description:
A journey across four centuries, showing how notions of sexual coldness and frigidity have been thought about by legal, medical, psychiatric, psychoanalytic and literary writers
About the Authors:
PETER CRYLE is author of Geometry in the Boudoir (1996), The Telling of the Act (2002), and La Crise du plaisir, 1740-1830 (2003). He also co-edited Libertine Enlightenment with Lisa O'Connell (2004) and Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle (2008) with Christopher Forth.
ALISON MOORE is a Scholar of Modern European Intellectual History. She teaches and researches in International Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Sexual Myths of Modernity; Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology (2012).
This special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies was guest edited by Alison Downham Moore and Sarah Lamb. The five papers in the special edition are: Yiu Tung Suen, A Qualitative Study of Older People Living with HIV in Hong Kong:... more
This special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies was guest edited by Alison Downham Moore and Sarah Lamb. The five papers in the special edition are:
Yiu Tung Suen, A Qualitative Study of Older People Living with HIV in Hong Kong: Resilience through Downward Comparison amidst Limited Social Support: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101079
Maria Concetta Lo Bosco, ‘Bodies that never grow’: How Psychiatric Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders Affect Autistic People’s Bodily Experience of Gender, Ageing, and Sexual Desire. : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101101
Branka Bogdan, Vračare : Village wise-women, reproductive health, and Yugoslavia’s early socialist modernisation project https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101084
Catherine Rider, The Medieval Biological Clock? Gendered Reproductive Aging in Medieval Western Medicine. This article has already appeared in volume 64: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101071
Somi Ahn, “She looked ten years older”: Mechanisms of the New Woman’s marriage and premature aging under patriarchy in Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins. This article has already appeared in volume 64: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101100
Yiu Tung Suen, A Qualitative Study of Older People Living with HIV in Hong Kong: Resilience through Downward Comparison amidst Limited Social Support: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101079
Maria Concetta Lo Bosco, ‘Bodies that never grow’: How Psychiatric Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders Affect Autistic People’s Bodily Experience of Gender, Ageing, and Sexual Desire. : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101101
Branka Bogdan, Vračare : Village wise-women, reproductive health, and Yugoslavia’s early socialist modernisation project https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101084
Catherine Rider, The Medieval Biological Clock? Gendered Reproductive Aging in Medieval Western Medicine. This article has already appeared in volume 64: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101071
Somi Ahn, “She looked ten years older”: Mechanisms of the New Woman’s marriage and premature aging under patriarchy in Sarah Grand’s The Heavenly Twins. This article has already appeared in volume 64: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101100
Research Interests:
This special edition on the gut-brain axis in history and culture appeared in the journal Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, edited by me as a historian of medicine, with Manon Mathias who is a terrific literary scholar working on... more
This special edition on the gut-brain axis in history and culture appeared in the journal Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, edited by me as a historian of medicine, with Manon Mathias who is a terrific literary scholar working on gut health questions, with gastroenterology researcher and clinician Jørgen Valeur.
Research Interests:
This is call for papers on the theme of 'Diverse Perspectives on Health and Medicine' for a special edition of the journal Australian Feminist Studies which will be published by Taylor & Francis in 2023. Expressions of interest are due... more
This is call for papers on the theme of 'Diverse Perspectives on Health and Medicine' for a special edition of the journal Australian Feminist Studies which will be published by Taylor & Francis in 2023. Expressions of interest are due by October 31st. Full papers are due by April 30th 2023. We particularly welcome papers focused on medical and health questions in feminist thought relating to the Global South, Indigenous cultures, Asian, European, South American, African and other cultures, immigrant, disability studies, mad studies, postcolonial studies and all scholarly disciplines welcome.
Research Interests: African Studies, Asian Studies, Gender Studies, Medical Anthropology, Indigenous Studies, and 15 moreFeminist Theory, Disability Studies, Feminist Philosophy, Gender and Sexuality, East European studies, History of Public Health, Sociology of Health, Public Health, Australian History, Feminist history, Feminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Modern European History, Medical History, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and South America
This article surveys available evidence of disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic to Australian university-based research and to the research training pipeline, considering both the long-term implications of this disruption, as well as the... more
This article surveys available evidence of disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic to Australian university-based research and to the research training pipeline, considering both the long-term implications of this disruption, as well as the disproportionate impacts on higher degree research candidates, early-career researchers and women academics with carer responsibilities. Drawing on existing global and local research studies, media reports, internal institutional documents, policy and advisory documents, data from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Research Council, the article argues that specific targeted management interventions and federal policy changes will be needed for the equitable and sustainable restoration of research capacity in the challenging funding environment beyond 2022.
Keywords: Australian research; research capacity; COVID-19 impact on research; responses to COVID-19; women and early-career researchers
Keywords: Australian research; research capacity; COVID-19 impact on research; responses to COVID-19; women and early-career researchers
Research Interests:
This interdisciplinary historical paper focuses on the past and current state of diverse forms of surgical hysterectomy as a global phenomenon relating to population control and sterilisation. It is a paper grounded in historical inquiry... more
This interdisciplinary historical paper focuses on the past and current state of diverse forms of surgical hysterectomy as a global phenomenon relating to population control and sterilisation. It is a paper grounded in historical inquiry but is unconventional relative to the norms of historical scholarship both in its wide geographical scope informed by the methodologies of global and intercultural history, in its critique of current clinical practices informed by recent feminist, race, biopolitical and disability studies, and by its engagement with scholarship in health sociology and medical anthropology which has focused on questions of gender and healthcare inequalities. The first part of the paper surveys existing medical, social-scientific and humanistic research on the racial, class, disability and caste inequalities which have emerged in the recent global proliferation of hysterectomy; the second part of the paper is about the diverse global rationales underlying radical gynaecological surgeries as a form of sterilisation throughout the long twentieth century. Radical gynaecological surgeries have been promoted for several different purposes throughout their history and, of course, are sometimes therapeutically necessary. However, they have often disproportionately impacted the most disadvantaged groups in several different global societies and have frequently been concentrated in populations that are already maligned on the basis of race, ethnicity, age, criminality, disability, gender deviation, lower class, caste or poverty. This heritage continues to inform current practices and contributes to ongoing global inequalities of healthcare.
Research Interests: Women's History, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Health Inequalities, Global Health, History of Public Health, and 9 moreInformed Consent, Social History of Medicine, History of Sexuality and Reproductive Technologies, Sexual and reproductive health and rights, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Sterilization, Hysterectomy, Women Movement for Reproductive Health Rights in India, and History of Gynecology
This chapter considers the influence and context of the Alexandrian neo-Platonic philosopher and mathematician known as Hypatia (.370-414 CE), as part of the Candice Goucher's superb edited collection on Women Who Changed the World.
Research Interests:
This is chapter about the early-twentieth-century French psychoanalyst, writer, supporter of Freud, great grand-niece of Louis Napoleon III, and Princess of Greece, the inimitable Marie Bonaparte. The chapter is part of a new and exciting... more
This is chapter about the early-twentieth-century French psychoanalyst, writer, supporter of Freud, great grand-niece of Louis Napoleon III, and Princess of Greece, the inimitable Marie Bonaparte. The chapter is part of a new and exciting collection of essays that Professor Candice Goucher has assembled and edited, Women Who Changed the World.
Research Interests:
Author copy pre-publication. Please used the published version for page specific citations. This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate 'ilm albah (the science of coitus), as well as other world... more
Author copy pre-publication. Please used the published version for page specific citations.
This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate 'ilm albah (the science of coitus), as well as other world traditions of sexual knowledge, by European sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contrasted it with their own forms of inquiry into sexual matters in the modern field of sexual science. It argues that the homogenization and minimization of all ancient and non-European forms of medical knowledge about sex, even one as substantial as the 'ilm al-bah tradition, supported a particular story about the origins of sexology's own emergence as a new and unprecedented biomedical and scientific way of knowing, characterized by an opposition assumed between sexuality and religion, by a view of sexual variations as perversions or pathologies, and by a view of Arabs and Muslims as sexually excessive. The article focuses on French, English, German, Austrian, and Italian sources of the 19th century that discussed the history of sexual medicine, relating these accounts to recent attempts to historicize sexology. It considers how forms of colonial hierarchy and exoticist views of non-European cultures impacted the dismissal of 'ilm albah among European sexual scientists and how they may continue to exert an influence on forms of modern historical inquiry that are not attentive to scholarship on medieval Islamicate sexual medicine.
This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate 'ilm albah (the science of coitus), as well as other world traditions of sexual knowledge, by European sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contrasted it with their own forms of inquiry into sexual matters in the modern field of sexual science. It argues that the homogenization and minimization of all ancient and non-European forms of medical knowledge about sex, even one as substantial as the 'ilm al-bah tradition, supported a particular story about the origins of sexology's own emergence as a new and unprecedented biomedical and scientific way of knowing, characterized by an opposition assumed between sexuality and religion, by a view of sexual variations as perversions or pathologies, and by a view of Arabs and Muslims as sexually excessive. The article focuses on French, English, German, Austrian, and Italian sources of the 19th century that discussed the history of sexual medicine, relating these accounts to recent attempts to historicize sexology. It considers how forms of colonial hierarchy and exoticist views of non-European cultures impacted the dismissal of 'ilm albah among European sexual scientists and how they may continue to exert an influence on forms of modern historical inquiry that are not attentive to scholarship on medieval Islamicate sexual medicine.
Research Interests: Translation Studies, History of Medicine, Nineteenth Century Studies, Sexology, History of Sexuality, and 6 moreIslamic Studies, Global History, History Of Sexology, European travellers and their depictions of the ancient and Islamic history of the Near East, French Language and Literature, and Late Medieval Islamicate Medicine
This is the pilot study for our new project of the same name. The paper asks questions about the resilience of radical gynaecological surgeries, such as hysterectomy and oophorectomy, from the moment of their widespread use in Western... more
This is the pilot study for our new project of the same name. The paper asks questions about the resilience of radical
gynaecological surgeries, such as hysterectomy and oophorectomy,
from the moment of their widespread use in Western European
and American practices of the late nineteenth century, to their
renewed increase in the Indian subcontinent and Africa into our
own time.
gynaecological surgeries, such as hysterectomy and oophorectomy,
from the moment of their widespread use in Western European
and American practices of the late nineteenth century, to their
renewed increase in the Indian subcontinent and Africa into our
own time.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Medical Anthropology, History Of Eugenics, Gender History, Transgender Studies, and 13 moreGlobal Health, Critical Medical Anthropology, Medical Humanities, Global Studies, Global History, Public Health, Feminist history, Medical History, History of Surgery, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Health Sociology, History of Gynecology, and Anthropology of Global Health
An extended video abstract for this open-access paper can also be found here: https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/blog/video-alison-downham-moore-on-foucaults-1960s-lectures-on-sexuality Short text abstract: In this extended review... more
An extended video abstract for this open-access paper can also be found here: https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/blog/video-alison-downham-moore-on-foucaults-1960s-lectures-on-sexuality
Short text abstract:
In this extended review essay we discuss the lectures on sexuality which Foucault delivered in the 1960s, published in a single volume in 2018. The first part of the volume comprises five lectures given at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964 to psychology students. The second part is Foucault's course 'The Discourse of Sexuality', given at the experimental University of Vincennes in 1969 in the philosophy department. We explore both the themes of the lectures, and the important editorial materials provided by Claude-Olivier Doron which situate these themes in relation to recent developments in the history and philosophy of biology, gender and sexuality. These lectures provide some important and surprising additions to Foucault's more familiar interest in sexuality, with discussion of plant and animal biology, sex differentiation, the question of sexual behaviour, perversion and infantile sexuality.
Short text abstract:
In this extended review essay we discuss the lectures on sexuality which Foucault delivered in the 1960s, published in a single volume in 2018. The first part of the volume comprises five lectures given at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in 1964 to psychology students. The second part is Foucault's course 'The Discourse of Sexuality', given at the experimental University of Vincennes in 1969 in the philosophy department. We explore both the themes of the lectures, and the important editorial materials provided by Claude-Olivier Doron which situate these themes in relation to recent developments in the history and philosophy of biology, gender and sexuality. These lectures provide some important and surprising additions to Foucault's more familiar interest in sexuality, with discussion of plant and animal biology, sex differentiation, the question of sexual behaviour, perversion and infantile sexuality.
Research Interests:
The open-access co-authored paper focuses on the study of aphrodisiacs - an overlooked area of global history which the article seeks to remedy by considering how such substances were commercially traded and how medical knowledge of them... more
The open-access co-authored paper focuses on the study of aphrodisiacs - an overlooked area of global history which the article seeks to remedy by considering how such substances were commercially traded and how medical knowledge of them was exchanged globally between 1600 and 1920. We show that the concept of ‘aphrodisiacs’ as a new nominal category of pharmacological substances came to be valued and defined in early modern Latin, English, Dutch, Swiss, and French medical sources in relation to concepts transformed from their origin in both the ancient Mediterranean world and in medieval Islamicate medicine. We then consider how the general idea of aphrodisiacs became widely discredited in mid-nineteenth-century scientific medicine until after the First World War in France and in the US, alongside their commercial proliferation in the context of new colonial trade exchanges between Europe, the US, Southeast Asia, Africa, India, and South America. In both examples, we propose that global entanglements played a significant role in both the cohesion and the discreditation of the medical category of aphrodisiacs.
Research Interests:
This open-access paper reflects on the challenges of writing long conceptual histories of sexual medicine, drawing on the approaches of both Michel Foucault and of Reinhart Koselleck. Foucault’s statements about nineteenth-century rupture... more
This open-access paper reflects on the challenges of writing long conceptual histories of sexual medicine, drawing on the approaches of both Michel Foucault and of Reinhart Koselleck. Foucault’s statements about nineteenth-century rupture considered alongside his later-life emphasis on long conceptual continuities implied something similar to Koselleck’s own accommodation of different kinds of historical inheritances expressed as multiple ‘temporal layers.’ The layering model in the history of concepts may be useful for complicating the historical periodizations commonly invoked by historians of sexuality, overcoming historiographic temptations to reduce complex cultural and intellectual phenomena to a unified Zeitgeist. The paper also shows that a haunting reference to ‘concepts’ among scholars of the long history of sexual medicine indicates the emergence of a de facto methodology of conceptual history, albeit one in need of further refinement. It is proposed that reading Koselleck alongside Foucault provides a useful starting-point for precisely this kind of theoretical development.
This is the same article released online in 2019 which has now been placed in a print edition of the journal and is made open access through funding provided by the Australian Research Council under the project 'Sexual Ageing in the History of Medicine'.
This is the same article released online in 2019 which has now been placed in a print edition of the journal and is made open access through funding provided by the Australian Research Council under the project 'Sexual Ageing in the History of Medicine'.
Research Interests:
This is the shareable 2019 pre-print version of my article now published in a 2021 print form in Modern Intellectual History. Please cite from the 2021 version. Abtract: From the very moment the concept of sexuality emerged in... more
This is the shareable 2019 pre-print version of my article now published in a 2021 print form in Modern Intellectual History. Please cite from the 2021 version.
Abtract: From the very moment the concept of sexuality emerged in nineteenth-century European medical and psychiatric thought, it became a topic of historicization. This historicization formed a consistent habit of thought in many of the medical and psychiatric texts that first enunciated sexuality as a distinct field of meaning. Dialogue between doctors and the first historians of sexuality informed the emergence of both sexology and of the historiography of sexuality. This dialogue suggests a need to rethink the origins of sexual historiography, situating current historians within a continuous genealogy, rather than as transcendental observers marked by epistemological rupture from earlier biological theories of sexual evolution.
Abtract: From the very moment the concept of sexuality emerged in nineteenth-century European medical and psychiatric thought, it became a topic of historicization. This historicization formed a consistent habit of thought in many of the medical and psychiatric texts that first enunciated sexuality as a distinct field of meaning. Dialogue between doctors and the first historians of sexuality informed the emergence of both sexology and of the historiography of sexuality. This dialogue suggests a need to rethink the origins of sexual historiography, situating current historians within a continuous genealogy, rather than as transcendental observers marked by epistemological rupture from earlier biological theories of sexual evolution.
Research Interests:
This article now published in History: The Journal of the Historical Association looks at why many historians of sexuality appear dissatisfied with the level of theoretical precision in the field by considering the reception of Foucault’s... more
This article now published in History: The Journal of the Historical Association looks at why many historians of sexuality appear dissatisfied with the level of theoretical precision in the field by considering the reception of Foucault’s approach and why some parts of it have been more difficult to assimilate within the historical discipline than others. It proposes that Foucault has been only partially understood by most historians of sexuality with the result that the properties of his unique disciplined ascesis have been under-considered. The paper argues that Foucault shared many of the critical and ethical goals that are inherent to certain types of historical writing, noting where he diverged from them in ways that have problematized his reception among sexuality historians. It argues that Foucault's own ascesis or ‘transformation of self’ as an intellectual might be better appreciated as a unique set of scholarly virtues expressed in his concerns about teleology, presentism, and the critical practice of ‘history of the present’ that characterize his work on sexuality.
The document found here is a final author version and the published version may differ slightly from it. If citing, please use the final version: Alison Downham Moore, "Foucault’s Scholarly Virtues and Sexuality Historiography," History: The Journal of the Historical Association 105, no.366 (July 2020): 446-469. Doi: 10.1111/1468-229X.13015
The document found here is a final author version and the published version may differ slightly from it. If citing, please use the final version: Alison Downham Moore, "Foucault’s Scholarly Virtues and Sexuality Historiography," History: The Journal of the Historical Association 105, no.366 (July 2020): 446-469. Doi: 10.1111/1468-229X.13015
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This is an author proof of my paper now published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality. It is slightly different from the final published version. It considers the importance of early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia... more
This is an author proof of my paper now published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality. It is slightly different from the final published version.
It considers the importance of early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia for the formation of enduring sexual concepts in long history as discussed by Foucault in the 4th unfinished volume of his History of Sexuality. This paper is about the layers of representation that acted to localize and externalize sexual shame as pudenda, and how these early configurations of genitalia helped to make sex matter for the body politic. It re-engages with Foucault’s fourth volume of the History of Sexuality by situating this unfinished work in the larger context of his ideas about sexuality and biopower. It counterpoises Foucault’s insistence on interiority with an observation about the externalization of sexual urges in antiquity as represented by the new concepts of genitalia and pudenda. The central claim is that much of the work that made sexuality available for enduring instrumentalization in European politics over a long time-span began in early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia.
If citing, please use the published version: Alison M. Downham Moore, "Foucault, Early Christian Ideas of Genitalia and the History of Sexuality," Journal of the History of Sexuality 29, no.1 (January 2020): 28-49. DOI: 10.7560/JHS29102
It considers the importance of early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia for the formation of enduring sexual concepts in long history as discussed by Foucault in the 4th unfinished volume of his History of Sexuality. This paper is about the layers of representation that acted to localize and externalize sexual shame as pudenda, and how these early configurations of genitalia helped to make sex matter for the body politic. It re-engages with Foucault’s fourth volume of the History of Sexuality by situating this unfinished work in the larger context of his ideas about sexuality and biopower. It counterpoises Foucault’s insistence on interiority with an observation about the externalization of sexual urges in antiquity as represented by the new concepts of genitalia and pudenda. The central claim is that much of the work that made sexuality available for enduring instrumentalization in European politics over a long time-span began in early Christian theological descriptions of genitalia.
If citing, please use the published version: Alison M. Downham Moore, "Foucault, Early Christian Ideas of Genitalia and the History of Sexuality," Journal of the History of Sexuality 29, no.1 (January 2020): 28-49. DOI: 10.7560/JHS29102
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This paper considers the hypothesis that modern gynecological practices relating to sex-steroid hormones reflect modern sedentary lifeways, along with pharmaceutical commercial pressures, to produce a widespread... more
This paper considers the hypothesis that modern gynecological practices relating to sex-steroid hormones reflect modern sedentary lifeways, along with pharmaceutical commercial pressures, to produce a widespread medical perception that all postmenopausal women need estrogen replacement therapy to avoid osteoporosis (bone fracture risk resulting from low bone density). Like the concept of menopause itself,the concept of universal menopausal osteopenia (low bone density) is a modern medical construction. Numerous clinical trials have demonstrated that estrogen replacement therapies (ERT) help women to retain bone-mass in ageing, but several trials have also shown that ERT is primarily effective in sedentary women who do not exercise. Recent studies of ancient human bones suggest that bone-mass in women was higher in the pre-agricultural ancestral past due to greater physical activity demands and greater nutrient density than are common in modern corporeal lifeways. From an evolutionary perspective,the metabolic nature of bone as a tissue that can be increased or reabsorbed in response not only to sex-steroid hormone levels but also to dietary mineral and protein status, vitamin D, and mechanical loading appears adapted to an environment that was abundant in nutritional micronutrients, sunlight exposure and regular, demanding physical activity
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Menopause was a term invented by French doctors in the early 1800s. They were aiming to de-pathologize normal reproductive ageing in women, but instead produced a symptomology that increased expectations of the end of menses as a period... more
Menopause was a term invented by French doctors in the early 1800s. They were aiming to de-pathologize normal reproductive ageing in women, but instead produced a symptomology that increased expectations of the end of menses as a period of ill health, while also framing menopause symptoms as a unique form of female hypochondria. This was a moment of important change in the life-ways of bodies in European societies, with large migrations from rural to urban contexts due to industrialization and the growth of cities. Reflecting on these evolutionary and historical observations, it is hypothesized here that menopause symptomology is a complex bio-psycho-cultural phenomenon produced through the combination of evolutionary mismatch and medical etiology. Its widely reported inflammatory effects from the nineteenth century to today may be the product of super normal stimuli acting upon women’s bodies in modern lifeways. However, these effects may also be exacerbated by the nocebo effect of the concept itself.
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La ménopause was a term invented to emphasize the non-pathological and strictly female nature of the cessation of menstruation. Post-revolutionary French medical faculties appeared intent on inducting certain student doctors with thesis... more
La ménopause was a term invented to emphasize the non-pathological and strictly female nature of the cessation of menstruation. Post-revolutionary French medical faculties appeared intent on inducting certain student doctors with thesis topics focused on the scientific critique of supposedly traditional and irrational fears of the 'critical age'. But from its first usage in French medical texts of the early nineteenth century, menopause connoted much more than this though its association with the competing and non-sex-specific terms the 'critical age' and the 'âge de retour' ('the turn of age'). Menopause was a concept that transmitted multiple temporal layers from older medical views about the sexes. The new concept was an important tool for the creation of a professional identity that distinguished doctors of women's health both as the true inheritors of ancient Hippocratic tradition and as the only legitimate scientific clinicians among the competing forces of folk medicine, midwifery and pharmacological charlatanism.
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Abstract: Researchers in the fields of affective neuroscience, psychology, urology, and physiology attempting to understand some of the conflicting politics around questions of women's sexual pleasure as a context to their own scientific... more
Abstract: Researchers in the fields of affective neuroscience, psychology, urology, and physiology attempting to understand some of the conflicting politics around questions of women's sexual pleasure as a context to their own scientific work, much to their credit, are now frequently considering historical accounts of these ideas (O'Connell, Sanjeevan, and Huston 2005; Pfaus et al. 2016). But many of the most accessible humanistic works that discuss the history of ideas about women's genitals and orgasms are plagued by a common historical myth: the notion that repressive views on sex in the Victo-rian era were primarily responsible for the denial of the clitoris and its central role in women's orgasmic response and for the reification of the vagina as the central organ of women's pleasure. Yet any scholar who has studied many nineteenth-century texts about sexuality across French, British, German, Ital-ian, and US cultures cannot help noticing that female sexual pleasure was in fact heavily represented in medical thought throughout this time. The view of the Victorians as sexually repressed was famously mocked by Michel Fou-cault in the first volume of The History of Sexuality as a myth that serves to reassure us that we in the present are now liberated sexually (1976, 1–22). But it seems that Foucault's laughter has had little impact on popular ideas about the origin of the overprivileging of vaginal pleasure and denigration of the clitoris that is understood to be part of the modern Western medical tradition. Hence, the first section of this article proposes a corrective to the historical schema that is widely circulated in popular writing about this question. Nineteenth-century medicine was not unanimously dominated by attempts to deny clitoral pleasure to women, and differing views about female sexual-ity circulated throughout this time, just as they did in the early modern era. Moreover, the notion of vaginal orgasm was strictly a twentieth-century invention , and no corollary of it can be found prior to this time. There never was an era that was or is liberated in its views about female pleasure, for the simple reason that there is never just one view shared by everyone on the matter—our own time is a case in point.
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Author proof of my chapter in the 2019 Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, ed. Howard Chiang
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This article considers a range of moral views about sexuality and menopause espoused both by doctoral candidates and mature clinicians in France throughout the long nineteenth century.
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This paper shows how Austrian psychiatrists of the 1870s developed the first pathological accounts of institutional coprophagia, examining how they related the behaviour to mental illness and dementia. These ideas about coprophagia... more
This paper shows how Austrian psychiatrists of the 1870s developed the first pathological accounts of institutional coprophagia, examining how they related the behaviour to mental illness and dementia. These ideas about coprophagia contrasted dramatically to the long European pharmacological tradition of using excrement for the treatment of a wide range of health conditions. Recent medical scholarship on institutional coprophagia is also reviewed here, with a novel hypothesis proposed about why some patients in long-term care resort to the behaviour in institutions where there is little opportunity for healthy human–microbe interactions.
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This is an author proof of my chapter in Mathias & Moore (eds), Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture. This chapter is about the intellectual origins, and cultural influences on the... more
This is an author proof of my chapter in Mathias & Moore (eds), Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture. This chapter is about the intellectual origins, and cultural influences on the formation, of Freud's ideas about the sublimation of anal and excretory instincts as a mark of civilization.
Manon Mathias was a total pleasure to work with on this volume!!!
Manon Mathias was a total pleasure to work with on this volume!!!
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The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis strikes most people as a historically novel medical concept. But in this special edition, we show that there were various forms of historical antecents in past cultures. We also consider the benefits of... more
The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis strikes most people as a historically novel medical concept. But in this special edition, we show that there were various forms of historical antecents in past cultures. We also consider the benefits of interdisciplinary approaches to medical research questions, engaging humanisties scholars and creative artists with gastroenterology, microbiology and neuroscience.
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Historical theory, as a mode of theoretical criticism, engages in both descriptive and prescriptive readings of historiographic practices, with a view to interpreting and evaluating their meaning as epistemological moves. But it also,... more
Historical theory, as a mode of theoretical criticism, engages in both descriptive and prescriptive readings of historiographic practices, with a view to interpreting and evaluating their meaning as epistemological moves. But it also, often implicitly, situates these practices within its own historical narrative, replete with its own telos of rupture, revolution, and the loss of innocence. As such, historical theory has elaborated its own history of cultural historiography. But these elaborations too have a history. This paper considers a number of theory-driven accounts of cultural historiography, which situate it within a specific historical narrative about its origins. That narrative consists in a vision of radical rupture, distinguishing the 'new cultural history' both from prevailing modes of historical ontology and epistemology up until the end of the twentieth century, and most importantly, distinguishing it from earlier variants of cultural historiography as it was practiced in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper describes the narrative of rupture that has imbued theoretical views of cultural historiography and examines the history of their elaboration; Secondly, it proposes that this narrative may itself be inappropriate, and suggests an alternative narrative about why earlier forms of cultural historiography have not commonly been seen as continuous with its current expressions. It argues that several genealogical tentacles connected older forms of cultural historiography to the newer variants, and that these connections cannot be assimilated within the telos of epistemological rupture that is typically invoked to describe the " linguistic turn ". Finally, a set of geo-political and institutional contexts are elaborated to explain the sensation of rupture reported by many cultural historians as, alternatively, the product of a series of nationalist hostilities and disciplinary exclusions from the late nineteenth century until after World War Two. Cultural historiography's apparent 'newness' can better be understood as a late-twentieth-century myth generated by both historical theorists and by cultural historians themselves, which has served to instantiate a new scholarly identity for historians as theory-sophisticates in the ambiance of post-structuralist university humanities cultures of the western world.
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This is an author proof of Chapter 8: Holocaust Pleasures, from my monograph Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology. This chapter considers the role of invocations of 'sadism' in recent Holocaust... more
This is an author proof of Chapter 8: Holocaust Pleasures, from my monograph Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology. This chapter considers the role of invocations of 'sadism' in recent Holocaust perpertrator historiography and sociology.
I have been receiving so many requests for this chapter since it does not show up at all on the google books search and Lexington still charges over US$100 for my book!
I have been receiving so many requests for this chapter since it does not show up at all on the google books search and Lexington still charges over US$100 for my book!
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Chinese version
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French Cultural Studies 24 (1), February 2013, 27-43.
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Debates about Holocaust representation have long been haunted by the idea that the enormity and intensity of human suffering in the events of World War Two are ‘unspeakable’. In many such statements the capacity for cognition and the... more
Debates about Holocaust representation have long been haunted by the idea that the enormity and intensity of human suffering in the events of World War Two are ‘unspeakable’. In many such statements the capacity for cognition and the ethical dimension of aestheticisation are blurred – the Holocaust is ‘unspeakable’ both in the sense of being impossible to imagine in its full horror, but also morally inappropriate as the subject of artistic production. But do all forms of cultural representation of the Holocaust fail in the same way as words or to the same degree, in the eyes of those who would judge their merits according the tenet of unspeakability? In this paper I will consider one particularly renowned work Henryk Górecki’s symphony no.3 (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych) of 1976, discussing how it mediated both the global politics of Holocaust representation and the recuperation of victimhood in postcommunist Poland. Górecki claimed a subjectivity of failure in response to the challenge of representing the events of World War Two and has insisted that the symphony is not about war but about sorrow. The vocal lyrics are nonetheless profoundly thematised around war suffering, and the Second World War in particular - events he approached with a musical language of epic, pathos and redemption. In framing the subject of his work, he emphasised a Polish national suffering that both eschewed mention of specifically targeted groups of victims, and beckoned to Polish folk and catholic traditions. Here I posit a new hypothesis about the success of this work by considering it in relation to the ethical debates about Holocaust empathic response that have occurred in relation to historiographic, literary and filmic representation.
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This article critiques Frankfurt School philosophical claims that blame the eighteenth-century philosophical Enlightenment, and the pornographic texts of the Marquis de Sade for the Holocaust.
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This journal no longer exists and suffered its demise before the DOI revolution - here is the only digital copy of it on the internet. Enjoy!
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Call for Expressions of Interest in the role of Managing Editor, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (ANU Press). EOI deadline October 31st2024 Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is now calling for expressions of interest in the role of... more
Call for Expressions of Interest in the role of Managing Editor, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (ANU Press). EOI deadline October 31st2024
Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is now calling for expressions of interest in the role of Managing Editor, following Alison Downham's Moore rescinding of the role toward the end of 2024. Appointment by December 2024 would be desirable to enable handover and the involvement of the new Editor in issuing a new call for papers for the 2025 edition.
Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is now calling for expressions of interest in the role of Managing Editor, following Alison Downham’s Moore rescinding of the role toward the end of 2024. Appointment by December 2024 would be desirable to enable handover and the involvement of the new Editor in issuing a new call for papers for the 2025 edition.
First published in Melbourne in 1984, Lilith is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes articles and reviews in all areas of women’s, feminist and gender history (not limited to Australia or any particular time period). The journal is published on an annual basis.
The journal is produced by a collective of postgraduates and early career researchers from across the globe, along with a distinguished Editorial Advisory Board of leading scholars in the field.
Tables of contents for back issues are available at: https://www.auswhn.com.au/lilith/past-issues/
Lilith articles can be downloaded through Informit, EBSCO and ANU Press.
Please send your EOI, explaining your motivation and qualification for this role, along with you CV to [email protected].
Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is now calling for expressions of interest in the role of Managing Editor, following Alison Downham's Moore rescinding of the role toward the end of 2024. Appointment by December 2024 would be desirable to enable handover and the involvement of the new Editor in issuing a new call for papers for the 2025 edition.
Lilith: A Feminist History Journal is now calling for expressions of interest in the role of Managing Editor, following Alison Downham’s Moore rescinding of the role toward the end of 2024. Appointment by December 2024 would be desirable to enable handover and the involvement of the new Editor in issuing a new call for papers for the 2025 edition.
First published in Melbourne in 1984, Lilith is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes articles and reviews in all areas of women’s, feminist and gender history (not limited to Australia or any particular time period). The journal is published on an annual basis.
The journal is produced by a collective of postgraduates and early career researchers from across the globe, along with a distinguished Editorial Advisory Board of leading scholars in the field.
Tables of contents for back issues are available at: https://www.auswhn.com.au/lilith/past-issues/
Lilith articles can be downloaded through Informit, EBSCO and ANU Press.
Please send your EOI, explaining your motivation and qualification for this role, along with you CV to [email protected].
Research Interests: Women's History, Masculinity Studies, History of Sexuality, Feminist history, Feminist Art History, and 7 moreFeminist Literary Theory and Gender Studies, Women's and gender history, Queer History, AUSTRALIAN LABOUR AND FEMINIST HISTORY, History of Gender and Sexuality, Feminist History of Philosophy, and Feminist history of empire and colonialism in East Asia
This is a short piece about the French invention of menopause
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Media article: From historical myths to modern femtech apps, the focus of medical products aimed at women is often profit, not well-being.
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Audio Podcast Interview I gave with Jana Byars about my book The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: A History, for the New Books in History series.
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2nd Australasian Health and Medical Humanities annual lecture, University of Queensland, June 2022
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This collaboratively produced media article published by 360info condenses the work of 2 peer-reviewed journal publications on the race, caste and class inequities in the historical and current practice of hysterectomy globally. The... more
This collaboratively produced media article published by 360info condenses the work of 2 peer-reviewed journal publications on the race, caste and class inequities in the historical and current practice of hysterectomy globally.
The articles it draws from are:
Alison Downham Moore, 'Race, Class, Caste, Disability, Sterilization and Hysterectomy', BMJ Medical Humanities, August 2022, 1-11. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2022-012381.
and:
Alison Downham Moore, Fouzieyha Towghi, Holly Ashford, Tinashe Dune and Rashmi Pithavadian, 'The Global Proliferation of Radical Gynaecological Surgeries: A History of the Present,' History & Anthropology 32 (4), August 2021: 1-25. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2021.1987232.
The articles it draws from are:
Alison Downham Moore, 'Race, Class, Caste, Disability, Sterilization and Hysterectomy', BMJ Medical Humanities, August 2022, 1-11. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2022-012381.
and:
Alison Downham Moore, Fouzieyha Towghi, Holly Ashford, Tinashe Dune and Rashmi Pithavadian, 'The Global Proliferation of Radical Gynaecological Surgeries: A History of the Present,' History & Anthropology 32 (4), August 2021: 1-25. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2021.1987232.
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Announcing my upcoming hybrid annual lecture for the Australasian Health and Medical Humanities network on June 1st in Brisbane and online, focused on the them of 'Gender in Health and Medicine':... more
Announcing my upcoming hybrid annual lecture for the Australasian Health and Medical Humanities network on June 1st in Brisbane and online, focused on the them of 'Gender in Health and Medicine': http://healthmedicalhumanities.net.au/2nd-annual-ahmhn-public-lecture-alison-downham-moore/
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The prescription of radical gynaecological surgeries exploded in biomedical practice only after the 1880s in France, Germany, Switzerland, England, the US and Canada, rapidly becoming globalised throughout the twentieth century. But from... more
The prescription of radical gynaecological surgeries exploded in biomedical practice only after the 1880s in France, Germany, Switzerland, England, the US and Canada, rapidly becoming globalised throughout the twentieth century. But from their very debut as innovative new procedures, abdominal hysterectomy and oophorectomy were unequally prescribed to different kinds of bodies on the basis of class, caste, race, disability, criminality and age. While such surgeries have recently become less common among affluent women in the global North, recent sociological and anthropological research indicates that they are still increasing in prevalence throughout the global South and are still disproportionately prescribed within populations. This paper is about the asymmetries of health-care inherited from past biopolitical entanglements which continue to inform current gynaecological research and clinical practice.
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This is a transcript of my recent Dinner Speech at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany. It is provided for those who were not able to attend, But please bear in mind that this is not a fully referenced research paper,... more
This is a transcript of my recent Dinner Speech at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany. It is provided for those who were not able to attend, But please bear in mind that this is not a fully referenced research paper, rather it is a sneak preview of parts of my in-progress book manuscript entitled Sex, Gender and Aging in the Modern Global History of Biomedicine.
Abstract: The history of biomedicine has been characterized by a series of oscillations between views of men and women as equivalent and views of them as radically differentiated. Concepts of aging were pulled precisely along this axis at the turn of the nineteenth century, giving rise simultaneously to a medical literature on the universalist concept of a ‘critical age’ shared by everyone around the age of 50, but also giving rise to a new concept of ‘menopause’ as a set of symptoms specific to women and signaled by the cessation of menstruation. Both these view remain current in our biomedical models still today. Previous studies of medical concepts of the sexes have suffered from a tendency to reduce entire eras to single discursive currents, whereas a close reading of multiple sources reveals important divergences of medical thought occurring simultaneously at every moment. There has also been a tendency for historians in this field either to focus narrowly on just 1 specific culture that was actually part of a larger transnational conversation, or to generalize about ‘the West’ on the basis of American or British sources only. We also cannot afford to think in purely culturally-reductionist terms about this period of early biomedicine. Concepts of aging in the nineteenth century were not only effected by novel discursive currents but by dramatic social changes giving rise to larger urban middle-class consumers of medical advice and products, as well as changes in corporeal lifeways that generated novel physiological pressures on aging bodies. These pressures today have generalized to numerous cultures throughout the world in the rise of global living standards and life expediencies.
Abstract: The history of biomedicine has been characterized by a series of oscillations between views of men and women as equivalent and views of them as radically differentiated. Concepts of aging were pulled precisely along this axis at the turn of the nineteenth century, giving rise simultaneously to a medical literature on the universalist concept of a ‘critical age’ shared by everyone around the age of 50, but also giving rise to a new concept of ‘menopause’ as a set of symptoms specific to women and signaled by the cessation of menstruation. Both these view remain current in our biomedical models still today. Previous studies of medical concepts of the sexes have suffered from a tendency to reduce entire eras to single discursive currents, whereas a close reading of multiple sources reveals important divergences of medical thought occurring simultaneously at every moment. There has also been a tendency for historians in this field either to focus narrowly on just 1 specific culture that was actually part of a larger transnational conversation, or to generalize about ‘the West’ on the basis of American or British sources only. We also cannot afford to think in purely culturally-reductionist terms about this period of early biomedicine. Concepts of aging in the nineteenth century were not only effected by novel discursive currents but by dramatic social changes giving rise to larger urban middle-class consumers of medical advice and products, as well as changes in corporeal lifeways that generated novel physiological pressures on aging bodies. These pressures today have generalized to numerous cultures throughout the world in the rise of global living standards and life expediencies.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Gender History, History of Sexuality, History of Public Health, Global History, and 11 moreSex Hormones, Global Public Health (History of Public Health), Global Public Health, Testosterone, Sex Difference, Hormones, History of hormones, vitamins and enzymes, History of pharmacy, Womens and Gender Studies, Womens History, and social history of medcine
https://youtu.be/dextYgwan18 Hormone replacement therapies have massively increased in popularity in recent years, both for women and for men, and are recommended by paleo proponents, self-hackers, sex educators, and prescribed by... more
https://youtu.be/dextYgwan18
Hormone replacement therapies have massively increased in popularity in recent years, both for women and for men, and are recommended by paleo proponents, self-hackers, sex educators, and prescribed by doctors, psychiatrists and gynecologists. But scientific research on HRT remains divided on the question of its potential health risks, while ideal ‘normal’ hormone levels assumed in the notion of it as ‘therapeutic’ remain dubious. From a historical perspective, such therapies represent a far more aggressive manipulation of the endocrine system than the botanical and gonadal tissues used across time and place to support vigor, cognition, fertility, athleticism or libido. But equally historically novel are the stressors of modern affluent urban lives on the endocrine system of aging bodies. This paper does not argue for or against HRT but instead attempts to map a wide set of biomedical and historical considerations for an informed and integrative consideration it.
Follow the link to watch the Youtube video of my talk on this theme at the Ancestral Health Symposium in San Diego, August 2019: https://youtu.be/dextYgwan18
Hormone replacement therapies have massively increased in popularity in recent years, both for women and for men, and are recommended by paleo proponents, self-hackers, sex educators, and prescribed by doctors, psychiatrists and gynecologists. But scientific research on HRT remains divided on the question of its potential health risks, while ideal ‘normal’ hormone levels assumed in the notion of it as ‘therapeutic’ remain dubious. From a historical perspective, such therapies represent a far more aggressive manipulation of the endocrine system than the botanical and gonadal tissues used across time and place to support vigor, cognition, fertility, athleticism or libido. But equally historically novel are the stressors of modern affluent urban lives on the endocrine system of aging bodies. This paper does not argue for or against HRT but instead attempts to map a wide set of biomedical and historical considerations for an informed and integrative consideration it.
Follow the link to watch the Youtube video of my talk on this theme at the Ancestral Health Symposium in San Diego, August 2019: https://youtu.be/dextYgwan18
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These are my slides from the talk I gave recently at the Ancestral Health Symposium in San Diego on Estrogen replacement therapies. The video of this talk should appear on the AHS Youtube channel in the following months.
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Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg Fellow Talk, August 14th 2019 - Alison M. Downham Moore on her book project: Sexual Ageing in the History of Medicine
Research Interests: Andrology, History of Medicine, Gender and Sexuality, History of Sexuality, Medical Humanities, and 12 moreMenopause, History of Medicine and the Body, Medical Humanities, Representations of the Body, History of Pharmacology, Male menopause, History of Endocrinology, Reproductive Endocrinology, Gender and Sexuality, History of pharmacy, Womens and Gender Studies, History of Gender and Sexuality, History of endocrinology, Medical Humanities and the Biopsychosocial Model, and Womens History
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A podcast of my November 6th 2017 public seminar presentation at Birkbeck, University of London, “Morbid Love: Between Decadence and Degeneration” has been made available by the Birkbeck Institute for Gender and Sexuality Studies.
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Blog-post for University of London Birkbeck Institute for Social Research Blog while a Visiting Fellow there 2017, “Myths of Menopause”:
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The term 'la ménopause' first appeared in the Dictionnaire abrégé des Sciences Médicales in 1824, though earlier versions of the neologism date from 1812. Post-revolutionary French medical faculties appeared intent on inducting certain... more
The term 'la ménopause' first appeared in the Dictionnaire abrégé des Sciences Médicales in 1824, though earlier versions of the neologism date from 1812. Post-revolutionary French medical faculties appeared intent on inducting certain student doctors with thesis topics focussed on the scientific critique of supposedly traditional and irrational fears of the "âge critique". The new concept of menopause appears to have been an important tool for a professional identity that distinguished doctors of women's health, on the one hand, from the inherited wisdoms of pre-revolutionary Hippocratic tradition, and on the other hand, from the competing forces of both midwifery and pharmacological charlatanism. But well into the early twentieth century, medical advice to women about menopause continued to refer to the debunked concepts of the "âge critique" or the “âge de retour", evoking the humoral model, and providing an account of the cessation of menstruation that entailed an elaborate set of hygienic and moral behaviours.
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In spite of Foucault’s famous ridicule of the myth of “Victorian repression” in the 1974 first volume of the History of Sexuality, both popular feminist writers and physiology researchers continue to blame nineteenth-century medicine for... more
In spite of Foucault’s famous ridicule of the myth of “Victorian repression” in the 1974 first volume of the History of Sexuality, both popular feminist writers and physiology researchers continue to blame nineteenth-century medicine for the notion of the vagina as the only legitimate locus of female pleasure. This paper suggests an alternative account of how the clitoris became maligned in largely a twentieth-century confluence of anti-masturbation thought and interwar gender discourses. In doing so it proposes a corrective to Thomas Laqueur’s notion of a dominant homologous model of male and female genitalia from ancient times that was replaced in the nineteenth-century by an insistence on the idea that women were radically different to men. Instead I propose that two distinct strands of thought about female genitalia (the Galenic and the Hippocratic) have been consistently present, and in tension, in Western medical and anatomical texts across time, our own time being no exception.
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In a range of texts on the topic of cultural history, there are assertions about cultural historiographic praxis as a new and innovative approach to the past. Such accounts typically attribute this ‘new’ field to the convergence of... more
In a range of texts on the topic of cultural history, there are assertions about cultural historiographic praxis as a new and innovative approach to the past. Such accounts typically attribute this ‘new’ field to the convergence of anthropological studies with history (such as that produced by the uptake of Clifford Geertz), and reference the late Annales School, feminist theory, post-colonial studies and French post-sructuralism as key influences. In the work of Joan Scott and Lynn Hunt there are claims to cultural history as an interdisciplinary and ‘post-modern’ practice, and as a new approach to the past that, in privileging the self-conscious study of texts, radically overturns empiricist assumptions about the existence of an historical truth beyond those texts. Similarly in historiographic surveys such as those of John Tosh and Georg Iggers, the emergence of recent cultural historiography is clustered with the supposed ‘post-modern challenge’ to history, with Derrida cited as the origin of the idea that ‘there is nothing outside/beyond the text’. But cultural historiography is not new, as this paper will show, and nor are the metaphysical concerns commonly misapplied to it. The Renaissance studies of Jacob Burckhardt in the nineteenth century produced a continuous genealogy of approaches to early modern Italy that privileged textual analysis and defined the historian as a multilingual polymath – not in any interdisciplinary sense, but in a pre-disciplinary one. In the early twentieth century his successors clustered around the idiosyncratic Aby Warburg, and they as well as the Dutch scholar Johan Huizinga, viewed their work as divergent to the emergent disciplines of history specifically in relation to their emphasis on text and their rejection of their contemporaries’ epistemological orthodoxies. The Warburg Institute did not inspire a great enthusiasm for forms of cultural history in the postwar era, unlike the contemporaneous Annales School , and a study of why that was so is the central focus of this paper. In the Marxist inspired European universities of the nineteen sixties, the study of past ‘culture’ could only be made relevant as the continuation of social history in its turn toward ‘mentalities’. But it was not until the alignment with post-structuralist epistemology occurred that cultural history was again reborn, albeit with poor a recognition of its antecedents.
In 2019 in the French journal Histoire, Medecine, Sante, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon here reviews our edited volume, Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture of 2018. Merci Sylvie!
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Marshall Zeringue's fun blogsite where he asks authors if their p.99 is indicative of their book! I replied no.
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This short review kindly provided by Annabella Henderson on the Polyphony medical humanities website makes the pretty standard criticism of every edited volume ever produced, ie. the editors could have done more to make the separate... more
This short review kindly provided by Annabella Henderson on the Polyphony medical humanities website makes the pretty standard criticism of every edited volume ever produced, ie. the editors could have done more to make the separate chapters gel together. This is one of the reasons I am now more keen to co-author books than jumble separate chapter by different people together into a book!
Research Interests:
Lisa Downing's 2017 review for the Journal of the History of Sexuality of my monograph Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology (2015) for which I am deeply grateful. It also makes me more determined to get... more
Lisa Downing's 2017 review for the Journal of the History of Sexuality of my monograph Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, masochism and historical teleology (2015) for which I am deeply grateful. It also makes me more determined to get my work more thoroughly and independantly proof-reader to avoid it being published with typographic and editorially-inserted errors.
Kristina Gupta's 2015 review for Psychology & Sexuality of my book with Peter Cryle, Frigidity, an Intellectual History (2011).
Sadnrine Sanos' 2014 review for Annales Canadiennes d'histoire, of my edited volume Sexing Political Culture in the History of France
Jacinthe Flore's 2014 review for Feminist Theory of my book with Peter Cryle on the history of frigidity.
A strangely complimentary and sarcastic, ambivalent 2005 review by Roger Sandall of my early-career work on the history of excrement which appeared in a right-wing thinktank journal!
This is the Call for Papers for the Lilith Symposium 2023, to be held September 27th and 28th at Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia.
The theme is 'Gender and Joy'!
The theme is 'Gender and Joy'!
Research Interests:
The Lilith Editorial Collective invites submissions for the 2023 issue. We welcome papers from scholars across academic disciplines with a focus on historical research and encourage postgraduate and early career researchers to submit... more
The Lilith Editorial Collective invites submissions for the 2023 issue. We welcome papers from scholars across academic disciplines with a focus on historical research and encourage postgraduate and early career researchers to submit papers. We also encourage scholars outside of Australia to submit papers.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, Women's History, Gender History, Social History, and 9 moreHistory of Feminism, Feminist history, Literary History, Indigenous Women & Human Rights, Feminist Art History, Transgender History, Queer History, History of Masculinity, and Disability Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, African American Studies
Our multi-disciplinary special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies on the history and culture of gender or sexuality and aging in medicine or health across time and place remains open for a few more contributions until September 15th... more
Our multi-disciplinary special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies on the history and culture of gender or sexuality and aging in medicine or health across time and place remains open for a few more contributions until September 15th 2022, with fast track publication guaranteed to successfully peer-reviewed papers.
Guest editors:
Associate Professor Alison Downham Moore, Western Sydney University School of Humanities & Communication Arts, and the Translational Health Institute ([email protected])
Professor Sarah Lamb, Brandeis University ([email protected]).
Researchers from all disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and medical sciences are invited to propose papers for inclusion in this special edition.
Proposals are particularly welcome that engage with medicine or health from another disciplinary perspective in relation to questions of gender or sexuality and aging, in particular history of medicine or biology, medical anthropology, philosophy of the medical sciences, sociology of medicine, literary, art, music or theatre studies engaging with medicine, as well as forms of medical research or gerontology that engage with humanistic or social scientific scholarship in relation to gender or sexuality.
Possible contributions may focus (though not exclusively) on themes such as:
Biomedical and cultural concepts of aging reproductive physiology
Specific diseases (contagious or non-contagious, chronic or acute, past or present) that have been thought to effect one sex or gender in particular
Concepts of sex/gender in relation to aging in non-Western medical traditions
Questions of mortality and life-expectancy that are sex- or gender-specific
Transgender, transsexual, intersex or non-binary aging questions in medicine
Intersections of race, indigeneity, or ethnicity, in relation to gender and aging in medicine.
Concepts of sexual function or pleasure in relation to aging
Ideas about sex-steroid hormones and aging
Cultural comparison of attitudes to gender and medicine in older people
Guest editors:
Associate Professor Alison Downham Moore, Western Sydney University School of Humanities & Communication Arts, and the Translational Health Institute ([email protected])
Professor Sarah Lamb, Brandeis University ([email protected]).
Researchers from all disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and medical sciences are invited to propose papers for inclusion in this special edition.
Proposals are particularly welcome that engage with medicine or health from another disciplinary perspective in relation to questions of gender or sexuality and aging, in particular history of medicine or biology, medical anthropology, philosophy of the medical sciences, sociology of medicine, literary, art, music or theatre studies engaging with medicine, as well as forms of medical research or gerontology that engage with humanistic or social scientific scholarship in relation to gender or sexuality.
Possible contributions may focus (though not exclusively) on themes such as:
Biomedical and cultural concepts of aging reproductive physiology
Specific diseases (contagious or non-contagious, chronic or acute, past or present) that have been thought to effect one sex or gender in particular
Concepts of sex/gender in relation to aging in non-Western medical traditions
Questions of mortality and life-expectancy that are sex- or gender-specific
Transgender, transsexual, intersex or non-binary aging questions in medicine
Intersections of race, indigeneity, or ethnicity, in relation to gender and aging in medicine.
Concepts of sexual function or pleasure in relation to aging
Ideas about sex-steroid hormones and aging
Cultural comparison of attitudes to gender and medicine in older people
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Women's Studies, Gerontology, Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, and 13 moreAging, Gender, Indigenous Peoples, LGBT Aging, Anthropology of Aging, Sexuality and Aging, History of Aging, Experiences of Old Age, Queer Aging, Sociology of Aging and the Life Course, Old Age in Cultural Texts, Philosophy of aging, and cultural studies of aging
This is version 4 of the new journal proposal for Praeterita: The Journal of Multi-Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Studies of the Past.
Please feel free to comment, suggest changes, additions, nuances or ideas.
Please feel free to comment, suggest changes, additions, nuances or ideas.
Research Interests: History, Intellectual History, Historical Anthropology, Classics, Art History, and 15 moreHistorical Sociology, Southeast Asian Studies, Latin America (Comparative Politics), Historical Linguistics, History of Medicine, Historiography, History of Science, African History, Physical Anthropology, Historical Thinking, Religious Studies, Literary studies, Historical Studies, History of Philosophy, and Archeology
Please see the new version of this proposal above
Research Interests: Art History, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Historical Sociology, Historical Linguistics, Women's History, and 15 moreGender History, Historiography, History of Political Thought, Global History, Historical Theory, Cultural Historical Geography, Literary History, History of Race and Ethnicity, Historical Thinking, Historical memory and Identity studies, Archaeology, Historical Archaeology. Medieval Archaeology, Anthropology, Social Identities, Material Culture, Artefact Studies, Diaspora Studies, Trade and Exchange, Ancient Greek Cultural & Social History, Transgender History, Historical Studies, and Historical Cultural Perspectives Studies
This is a call for papers for a special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies, on 'Gendered and Sexual Aging in the History and Culture of Medicine'. Professor Sarah Lamb and Associate Professor Alison Downham Moore will be guest... more
This is a call for papers for a special edition of the Journal of Aging Studies, on 'Gendered and Sexual Aging in the History and Culture of Medicine'. Professor Sarah Lamb and Associate Professor Alison Downham Moore will be guest editors of the special edition.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Medical Anthropology, Gender History, Philosophy of Medicine, Anthropology of Gender, and 9 moreLiterature and Medicine, History of Sexuality, Medical Humanities, Medical Ethics, Ageing and Health, Aging & the life course, Sociology of Ageing, Cultural Studies of Science, and Medical History
This is my review of the new Claude Olivier-Doron and Graham Burchell English-translated edition of Foucault's 1964 Clermont-Ferrand & 1969 Vincennes Lectures on sexuality. This review was published in the Journal of the History of... more
This is my review of the new Claude Olivier-Doron and Graham Burchell English-translated edition of Foucault's 1964 Clermont-Ferrand & 1969 Vincennes Lectures on sexuality. This review was published in the Journal of the History of Sexuality.
Research Interests:
I wrote this review of E Jane Burns' seminal work on reflective practice in the use of feminist and embodiment approaches to the reading of medieval texts about bodies, when I was an honours graduate, having just completed my thesis on... more
I wrote this review of E Jane Burns' seminal work on reflective practice in the use of feminist and embodiment approaches to the reading of medieval texts about bodies, when I was an honours graduate, having just completed my thesis on the medieval French Fabliaux.
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Book Review of Sean Quinlan, Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France. 336 pp., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. ISBN 9781501758331. Isis, Journal of the History of Science Society 13, no.3 (2022);... more
Book Review of Sean Quinlan, Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France. 336 pp., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. ISBN 9781501758331. Isis, Journal of the History of Science Society 13, no.3 (2022); 661-662. DOI: 10.1086/721042.
Research Interests:
Book Review of Maria Kathryn Tomlinson, From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women's Writing in French, Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 77. 234pp., Liverpool: Liverpool University... more
Book Review of Maria Kathryn Tomlinson, From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women's Writing in French, Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 77. 234pp., Liverpool: Liverpool University Pres, 2021. ISBN 978-1-800-34846-2. H-France 22 (77), 2022: 1-5: https://h-france.net/vol22reviews/vol22no77moore.pdf
Research Interests:
Book Review of Jessie Hewitt, Institutionalizing Gender: Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press), 238pp. ISBN: 978-1-5017-53312. H-France 22 (12), 2022: 1-5:... more
Book Review of Jessie Hewitt, Institutionalizing Gender: Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press), 238pp. ISBN: 978-1-5017-53312. H-France 22 (12), 2022: 1-5: https://h-france.net/vol22reviews/vol22no12moore.pdf
Research Interests:
This is the program - as it happened - of the symposium on 'Gender and Joy in Feminist History', held September 27th and 28th in Melbourne, organised by the editorial collective of Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (Saskia Roberts,... more
This is the program - as it happened - of the symposium on 'Gender and Joy in Feminist History', held September 27th and 28th in Melbourne, organised by the editorial collective of Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (Saskia Roberts, Bridget Andresen, Zoe Smith, Connie Skibinski, Tianna Killoran, Emma Carson, Huda Syyed and Alison Downham Moore (Managing Editor), in collaboration with Sam Carroll and sponsored by the Australian Women's History Network, the ACU Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, and Gale Cengage.
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May 21st 2024 Online Talk of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine Abstract: It is commonly thought that either menopause symptoms have only recently become recognised by western medicine, or that they were... more
May 21st 2024 Online Talk of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine
Abstract:
It is commonly thought that either menopause symptoms have only recently become recognised by western medicine, or that they were always recognised by every medical tradition in history. Neither was the case. Instead, the concept of women's final cessation of menses as a 'critical time' that needed to be managed through lifestyle and medical interventions had a very specific contextual unfolding in nineteenth century French institutional medicine. The first works describing menopause and its treatment were penned by young men in medical degrees at the universities of Paris and of Montpellier. The uses of menopause in medical debate, contestation and in the formation of specialist identities made it an enduring object of inquiry for hygienists, psychiatrists, physicians, medical popularisers, surgeons and pharmacists. But only in the final decades of the nineteenth century were any women involved in medical description of it, or in other kinds of responses to medical views of their ageing.
Abstract:
It is commonly thought that either menopause symptoms have only recently become recognised by western medicine, or that they were always recognised by every medical tradition in history. Neither was the case. Instead, the concept of women's final cessation of menses as a 'critical time' that needed to be managed through lifestyle and medical interventions had a very specific contextual unfolding in nineteenth century French institutional medicine. The first works describing menopause and its treatment were penned by young men in medical degrees at the universities of Paris and of Montpellier. The uses of menopause in medical debate, contestation and in the formation of specialist identities made it an enduring object of inquiry for hygienists, psychiatrists, physicians, medical popularisers, surgeons and pharmacists. But only in the final decades of the nineteenth century were any women involved in medical description of it, or in other kinds of responses to medical views of their ageing.