Dean of the College Presents
Lianne Habinek
Assistant Professor of English
"Labor pains: William Harvey and the travails of conception"
7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
This talk shows that Harvey’s metaphor taps into the pulse of a broader association between brain and womb that flourished in a wide variety of discourses. The womb-as-brain metaphor abounds in midwifery manuals, which worry constantly about the effect the mother’s imagination could have on the developing fetus: on a fairly benign level, if the mother craves strawberries, a strawberry-shaped birthmark could appear, but, more troublingly, maternal discontents might manifest monstrosities that exposed not only the mother’s disordered thinking but the problematics of the country in which she lives. Conversely, the brain-as-womb metaphor served to elaborate upon the creative process, as writers (with much false modesty) describe the difficult gestation of their ideas and the laborious birth onto paper that resulted in the child-book being delivered into the hands of the reader.
*Reception prior to the event beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the Olin Atrium
For more information, call 845-758-7421, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 7:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102