070116 PS BA-Proseminar - Medicine, Biosciences and Sex/Gender in the 20th Century (2025W)

Does a cell have a sex, and how did scientists answer this question? How were concepts of sex and gender produced in modern clinical practice? What areas of agency did patients have? Medicine and the life sciences constitute a central aspect of modernity. From the 19th century onward, new disciplines emerged, such as Charles Darwin’s developmental biology, as well as institutions ranging from Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science to the Boston Women’s Health Collective, which investigated medicine and gender along with their biological, social, economic, and legal conditions and implications. Since their reorganization at the end of the 19th century, medicine and the life sciences have also formed a central field of intervention for the modern nation-state, as well as a subject of theoretical, philosophical, feminist, and personal interpretations—a perspective that this seminar will adopt in exploring the history of gender concepts.
The seminar has two aims. First, it seeks to teach and strengthen practical techniques of historical research: working with sources and developing one’s own research perspective (questions, research background). The focus lies on formulating a historical research question, assessing the state of research and scholarly debates, identifying and analyzing the relevant literature (both print and digital) for the seminar paper’s topic, as well as researching and interpreting corresponding sources (written, visual, material). Additional emphasis is placed on scholarly argumentation, critical reflection, and constructive critique.
Second, the seminar introduces participants to the history of medicine with a focus on gender history through sources (texts, images, objects, films, pamphlets) from the 20th century, which will be discussed collectively in dialogue with current research literature. Participants will gain a broad understanding of the history of approaches, theories, and methods at the intersection of medicine and gender. Discussions will cover classic topics such as war and psychiatry, post-colonial demands for reproductive justice, and debates at the end of the 20th century around new parenthood, LGBTQ communities, and the associated reconfiguration of the concept of diversity in medicine.
The seminar is aimed at students who are prepared to learn and refine the development of their own research perspective by engaging—both in writing and orally—with sources as well as with historical, epistemological, and feminist analyses.