Historiography

One of my advisors has posed some questions about my historiography and since I am writing a conference paper. I thought it would be useful to talk about the key works that inform my dissertation. So here it goes: 

Le Naour Jean-Yves and Catherine Valenti. Histoire de l’avortement: XIXe-XXe siècle. Paris: Seuil, 2003.   Le Naour and Valenti historicize the topic of abortion. They chronicle changes in abortion law in France during the 19th and 20th centuries. By going through the historical changes and the context of changing French laws and their enforcement they effectively show that the topic of abortion needs to be tackled by more historians instead of being left to political scientists or as a subcategory of women's history. Le Naour ant Valenti believe that privileging social practices the political dimensions that give a full understanding of abortion. 

Sohn, Anne-Marie.Du Première Baiser à L’Alcôve: La Sexualité des Français au Quotidien, 1850-1950. France: Aubier, 1996. Sohn uses judicial sources, looking at cases involving marital infidelity, sexual crimes, infanticide, and abortion to investigate changing sexual behaviors and attitudes between 1850 and 1950. She finds that between the two world wars there is an eroticization of the couple revealing itself in the acceptability of public kisses int the mouth, nudity, oral caresses, and the progression of physical relations outside of marriage. During this period love became the central glue of the couple and the growing valorization of affection and sensuality resulted in the growth of sexual experiences. Also creating a growing dissatisfaction during marriage. At the center of these changes were women. They were fighting fear of public opinion, the possibility of children, and the virgin Mary ideal. Although the double standards in the moral standard for men and women were not erased the changes that occurred between 1850 and 1950 laid the groundwork for the sexual revolution of post-1968 France. 

Eder, Franz X., Leslie Hall, and Gert Hekma, eds. Sexual Cultured in Europe: Themes in Sexuality. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. 

De Blécourt, Willem. " Cultures of abortion in The Hague in the early twentieth century." 

Fisher, Kate. "'Din't stop to think, I just din't want another one': the culture of abortion in interwar South Wales." Both de Blécourt and Fisher talk about cultures of abortion and reconstructing choices the reasoning of the men and women who sought abortions. In both cases the abortion cultures they examine do not seem to be the agonizing moral conflict that might be imagined. Abortion was the solution to a problem. De Blécourt also examines the role of husbands and lovers. It was primarily lovers who found other men to perform abortions, women found other women, and husbands were almost entirely absent. He concludes that "outside of marriage abortion was shameful, inside marriage it was almost normal."

Chaperon, Sylvie. Les Années Beauvoir 1945-1970. Paris: Fayard, 2000. Chaperon brings together studies of feminism and that of feminist organizations to emphasize the importance of feminist organizations is shaping the post-WWII women's movement. The period she looks at involves two generations of feminists separated by the post-1968 radicalization. 

Sohn, Anne-Marie. Chrydslides: Femmes Dans la Vie Privée (XIXe-XXe siècles) vol. I and II. Paris: Publication de la Sorbonne, 1996.  

Moussuz-Lavau, Janine. Les Lois de L’Amour: Les Politiques de la Sexualité en France (1950-1990). Paris: Documents Payot, 1991. 

 

Organizing

To do list:

• Finish organizing research 
• Read Dissertation 

The organizing will probably be an on-goign thing but for now I just need to finish organizing summer research. I am also looking into software that helps organize pictures and take notes which I think will be extremely useful. 

There are also 2 conferences I need to be looking towards to present my work. 

Update

So after leaving France, I spent about a week in Kansas, then 2 weeks in Mexico before returning to California. At the moment I am TAing for 21B World History and trying to write my prospectus.

Part of the problem with writing this thing is that I don't want to commit to anything. I know that the prospectus is not set in stone but still there is something about writing an idea down and having a committee officially respond to it. Oh well either way right now it looks like I will be holding my colloquy on Feb 28th so... lets just hope its not another disaster.

Also, I still need to finish backing up all of my search from this supper, I need to label it and figure out a way of going through it. But to avoid all of this I am going to grade midterms today :).

A plus!

journals

At the BnF: 

• Looked through La Croix Jurassienne for anything on the Bobigny trial or on abortion. Despite the fact that it is a local newspaper there was a large article on the front page about he Bobigny trial. It was only one in November but it is significant and makes me want to look through every local newspaper to see of there was coverage of the trial. This is something that I will for sure do but will probably have to wait for my next trip to France. The newspaper also had articles on abortion and sexual education which they were actually in favor of... that was really interesting. I only looked at the year 1972 and the first 4  months of 1973. 

At the BMD: 

• Found the journal: Choisir. This was a great find because although I had been working through the journal at the BnF at the BMD I can take pictures of it. This is huge news and totally made my day :)

Also learned a new word today: greffer which means to graft which I also had to look up and means to make money by shady or dishonest means. And mec means guy. 


I have not gone through all the courrier in the journal but it will be interesting to see if there is a change in the letters that they print as the years progress. There are women writing to the journal in pretty desperate situations. In the MLAC mail there were still problems after 1975 when abortion was legalized but when a woman was less than 15 weeks into a pregnancy the centers could perform the abortions themselves, however if the pregnancy was more advanced it got m ore complicated. These abortions were and continue to be illegal in France. So, what MLAC did was organize trips to London and Amsterdam where women could have medically practiced late-term abortions. I wonder what Choisir does with letters from women seeking later-term abortions. Do they send them to MLAC? or maybe they have no way of helping them. Choisir was not really set up for that kind of problem but maybe in practice they did participate in organizing trips abroad.

A long day at the archives

Bibliothèque Nationale de Franc- François Mittterand (BnF) - Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand (BMD)

Yes, that's right I went to 2 archives today. Spent from 9:00a.m-1:30p.m. at the BnF and from 2:30-5:00p.m. at the BMD.

At the BnF I went through Choisir's journal called... yes, you guessed it: Choisir. This turned out to be a gold mine of information and I have only gone through 4 numbers. So I had them save everything for me so I can go back tomorrow and continue working on the journal. I still have not finished looking at all their Laissez- les Vivre files but I kind of needed a break from all the anti-abortion arguments.

At the BMD I took pictures of their dossier on the Bobigny trial. I also finished going through their file on Laissez-les Vivre and took pictures of everything before I got too tired to continue.

Tomorrow, I will go back to the BnF, continue going through the journals and make a reservation to go to the Inathèque. I don't know if I will go back to the BMD tomorrow I might leave that for the day after tomorrow. That way I can spend the whole day at the BnF going through the journals without interruption... :)

At the Marguerite Durand

Spent the day at the bibliothèque Marguerite Durand. Looked at the dossier: Laissez-les vivre cote: dos 624.1 LAI
- Took notes but will need to come back and take pictures or make copies of documents especially the publication "Courrier de Laissez-les Vivre," a response to and article in its first number, and the letter written to supporters


Website of Laissez-les-Vivre: http://laissezlesvivre.free.fr/
After a quick search the website's archive seems to be really excellent- I will probably be able to use the website from the US

Need to look up: le professeur Jérôme LEJEUNE. There seems to be controversy around him but I am not entirely sure what he did or said.

p.s. the bathrooms at the Marguerite Durand are super clean

A Mexican In Paris!

I am currently in Paris doing research for my dissertation. I will post a dissertation description as soon as a have a good one. At the moment, I plan on using this blog to store notes and ideas relating to my dissertation but from time to time I will probably post comments on pop culture and politics.