Sexuality, Family Planning, and Reproduction

The history of sexuality, family planning, and reproduction in Central and Eastern Europe sounds out the historical dimensions across a broad field where human biology, medicine, policy, and government social programmes intersect with fundamental conceptions of desired or feared social developments. From contraception to representations of motherhood, and controversies over reproductive rights, using the example of the historically changing political, social, cultural and scientific interconnections in Central and Eastern Europe, the contributors to this volume invite reflections on historical developments that open new perspectives for the 21st century.

Fritz Dross, born in 1965, works as an assistant professor at the institute for the history of medicine and medical ethics at Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Erlangen. The historian did his doctorate on the history of urban hospitals around 1800 in Düsseldorf. In his research, he focuses on the history of hospitals, health care provision and poor relief in the early modern period as well as the history of gynecology in the 20th century.

Birgit Nemec is a historian of science and medicine and a professor for the history of medicine at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. She is interested in the roles of patients and activists in the negotiation of knowledge and practices in the new history of reproduction. Birgit Nemec is member of the Young Academy of Science.

Igor Kakolewski, born in 1963, is a historian and director of the Center for Historical Research Berlin of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the early modern history of the Central-Eastern Europe and the cultural history of mental disorders of the ruling elites in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.