Cambridge Reading Group on Reproduction: Professor Sara Brill

With visiting scholar Professor Sara Brill, Sara is Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University.

We are thrilled that Sara will be leading the group discussing the introduction to her upcoming book “Birth: Generativity and Power in Greek Antiquity”.

 

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Introduction from Sara: 

Recent philosophical explorations of natality emphasize the connection between ideas about birth and the comportment one takes toward one's status as born, the reciprocal effects of attitudes toward human natal status on social and political structures of power, and the need to attend to differences in both the meaning and lived experience of birth in order to avoid universalizing the birth experiences of one group over those of others. In turning to the contest for authority about birth staged in a variety 5th and 4th BCE Greek texts, I aim to contribute to this larger endeavor to track a cultural history of natality, to ask how the peoples of a particular time and a particular place took up the reality, provocation, and theorization of birth, and to consider why they did so in the way they did. In this reading group we will use the Introduction as a springboard for diving into questions about the stories (both individual and collective) that people tell themselves about being born, how these stories impact their lives, and the potentially liberatory effects of imagining birth differently.

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Group opens with optional lunch at 12:30, discussions 13:00-14:00, closing 14:30

Location: Meeting Room 1, 17 Mill Lane

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ygikDgy4W1eVuYaB9

Behind the Pitt Building, go through the arch 17 Mill Lane into the courtyard, up the central steps and signage will direct you from there.