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We regret to announce that this talk has been cancelled.  Thank you for your understanding.

 

Abstract:

Over the course of the nineteenth century, Mexicans developed novel attitudes toward monstrous births that differed from colonial attitudes to such phenomena. This presentation illustrates how newspaper articles, medical journals, and museums departed from the associations of wonder and pride circulating in the eighteenth century and instead reflected popular attitudes of revulsion and horror. Whereas late colonial notices restricted speculation about the causes of physical exceptionalism to “the rare effects of nature,” by the late nineteenth century, scientists and physicians turned their focus directly onto (and into) the bodies of the mothers who had produced such creatures, a shift that paralleled contemporary obstetrical developments in Mexico more broadly. Eager to defend Mexico’s status in the field of international opinion, Mexican obstetrics’ most vocal spokesperson, doctor Juan María Rodríguez, advocated for the idea of Mexican monstrosity as an acquired rather than inherent trait; such a view allowed for the possibility of the biological redemption of monstrous productions, but also contributed to the pathological perception of Mexican women’s reproductive anatomy typical of the country in this period.

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