REPRODUCTIVE POLITICS AND MOTHERHOOD IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Our two-day conference will be opened with a reference to the artwork Pleiemødre i lagmannsretten (Foster Mothers in Court), by the renowned Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, reproduced on the cover of our book of abstracts. The narrative behind Munch’s work is the real trial of foster mothers that took place in Oslo in 1902. These were women who had taken in infants for money but were accused of neglecting them or deliberately allowing them to die. Munch depicts them not as individualized figures, but as a row of distorted, mask-like faces, underscoring both the collective social stigma and the grotesque spectacle of the trial. The painting is less a documentary record than a biting commentary on the intersection of poverty, crime, and motherhood.

The central theme is social injustice: the women are at once perpetrators and victims, condemned by the law yet also products of poverty and desperation. The stylized, almost caricature-like treatment underlines the tension among satire, social critique, and tragedy.

The symbolism of Munch’s work can also be read in a much broader sense. In fact, it reveals precisely the motifs that form the guiding thread of our conference. How and why, throughout history, have mothers been judged? Who were the actors that judged them? Who acted as their allies or advocates, and who as their accusers? Which systemic circumstances and socio-political barriers contributed to mothers finding themselves symbolically in the dock – or perhaps managing to avoid it? How did mothers themselves experience these infamous processes?

The conference papers will seek answers to these and other questions related to motherhood and reproductive rights in a variety of sources, ranging from court records to oral testimonies, and across a broad chronological spectrum, from the eighteenth century to the present. They will also address diverse geographical settings, from our own Slovenian context to, for instance, the Ottoman Empire and India.

PROGRAMME

DAY 1 

Thursday, September 25, 2025

09:00–09:30 Registration

09:30–10:00 Welcome speeches / Introduction

• Sašo Jerše, Associate Dean of Doctoral Studies (3rd Cycle) and Research at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
• Rok Stergar, Head of the research program Slovenian History (ARIS) at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
• Ana Cergol Paradiž, Principal Investigator, Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

10:00–11:00 Keynote lecture

• Susan Grayzel: Writing the Pregnant Body into the History of Modern War 

11:00–11:10 Coffee break

11:10–12:00 War and motherhood

• Meta Remec: The Dead Who Might Return: Widows and Families in Legal and Emotional Limbo After the First World War
• Kornelija Ajlec: Reproductive Politics and Public Discourse on Women’s Fertility in Slovenia During the Post-World War II Reconstruction Era 

12:00–12:20 Coffee break

12:20–13:30 Single mothers

• Dragica Čeč: Experiences of Motherhood Among Unmarried Mothers, 1780–1840: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Care of Illegitimate Children
• Dunja Dobaja: Unwed Mothers in the Occupation Legal System in Slovenia 1941–1945
• Tanja Buda: When Violence Leads to Separation: Social Work and the Silencing of Perpetrators in Slovenia, 1955–1980

13:30–14:30 Lunch break

14:30–15:20 Demography, politics and ideology

• Marta Botiková: The Contradictory Nature of Restricted Reproduction from a Historical-Ethnological Perspective
• Victor Strazzeri: “Motherhood as Social Value”: Italian Communist Women’s Conception of Motherhood in the 1970s 

15:20–15:40 Coffee break

15:40–16:30 Abortion

• Alena Lochmannová: “Vyhánění dítěte” – Abortion Practices, Public Discourse, and Women’s Strategies in Czechoslovakia in the First Half of the 20th Century
• Ivana Dobrivojević Tomić: From “Assistance that Society Provides” to Women’s Right. Discussions on Abortion in Socialist Yugoslavia

DAY 2

Friday, September 26, 2025

10:00–11:10 “Unfit” parents and science

• Martin Kuhar: Eugenics in the Independent State of Croatia
• Ana Antić: Schizophrenia and Bad Motherhood: Globalising the Diagnosis
• Shilpi Rajpal: Motherhood and the Mental Hygiene Movement in India

11:10–11:30 Coffee break

11:30–12:40 Childbirth

• Katarina Keber: The Emergence of Midwives in Carniola within the 19th Century Habsburg Public Healthcare System
• Lisa Füchte: Giving Birth to the New Soviet Man: Mother and Infant Protection as Biopolitics after the Russian Revolution of 1917
• Almira Sharafeeva: Pain Relief in Childbirth or Military Strategy? Obstetric Anesthesia as a Soviet Biopolitical Project in the 1930s

12:40–13:40 Lunch break

13:40–14:50 Childcare

• Nilab Saeedi: Muslim Milk, Jewish Blood: The Case of Milk Kinship in Ottoman Mosul
• Urška Bratož: A Thin Line Between Survival and Premature Death: On Infant Mortality in Koper (1880–1919)
• Ganna Zaremba-Kosovych: Reproductive Experiences of Women with Disabilities in Ukraine in the First Quarter of the 21st Century

14:50–15:50 Closing remarks

• Ana Cergol Paradiž, Principal Investigator