Birthing the Nation - Cody, Lisa Forman (Associate Professor, Claremont McKenna College)

Lisa Cody analyses two intertwined eighteenth-century phenomena: the development of the modern British state, and the emergence of the man-midwife as the chief authority over sex and childbirth. This provocative work proposes how national, religious, ethnic, and gendered identities were experienced through and symbolized by birth and midwifery.