About (Mis)Conceptions

A Cultural History of Pregnancy Indeterminacy

(Mis)Conceptions is an AHRC-funded research project, which identifies ambiguity around pregnancy as a significant but under-researched phenomenon both in history and today, although one which is significantly culturally repressed. This ambitious creative project combines archival research, historical analysis, artistic exploration and an embedded public engagement programme to alter perceptions of the (non)reproductive body, past, present, and future.

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Whilst there is a presiding modern habit of pitying historical people for not having certainties, knowledge and options that people have today, there is also extensive evidence that modern prospective parents can live through a bewildering and under-acknowledged period of uncertainty. Although some birthing parents retrospectively say, ‘I just knew I was pregnant’, many others who have tried to conceive, whether successfully or not, report prolonged, chronic, and recurrent confusion. What is more, the boundaries between this immediate and much longer-term uncertainty (will parenthood happen for us?) are blurred.

Using interdisciplinary methods, (Mis)Conceptions intervenes to improve awareness of history and our place within it. Whilst modern technologies and techniques do provide knowledge and opportunities, they have also presided over the loss of socio-linguistic tools for negotiating bodily ambiguity, disappointment, and delay.

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The project leans on the archival research of historian Isabel Davis, the creative imaginings of artist, Anna Burel, and a series of workshops, focus groups, and talks that aim to gather knowledge of a shared experience of indeterminacy, often hidden from the public eye, but home to so many of us. This experience, as uniting as it is interesting, creates a fascinating contrast with modernist conceptions of scientific certainty. It also reminds us that we remain within the landscapes of medical/cultural histories and not outside of them. From Mary Stuart's pseudo-pregnancies in the 16th century, to a fashion for a pad to simulate pregnancy in the 18th, the 19th century idea for an Experimental Conception Hospital, to the mid-20th-century method of using frogs as pregnancy tests, we remain bound by the same constraints of knowing, the same yearnings for resolution. Examining the anecdotal, the medical manuscript, the personal narrative, the historiographic and the occult, this project hopes to celebrate the curiosity of those striving to conceive through the ages, and those medical practitioners who have tried to help them. Most of all, our hope is that (Mis)Conceptions will help us come to terms with the (un)reproductive body, and with minds and hearts uncontent with the unknown. 

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