Date/Time
Thursday
23 Sep 2021
4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Event Type
Book Launch

Sandra Eder
Assistant Professor of History

Elena Conis
Associate Professor of Journalism

*Virtual Event: Zoom link*

In the twenty-first century, the gender of children is anticipated, denied and debated to seemingly unprecedented extents. Some parents are raising gender-neutral “theybies,” at the same time that pink or blue gender reveal parties themes have become pervasive and pediatricians and psychologists hotly debate the use of puberty blockers for transgender youth. In pediatric practice, gender matters. Gender norms frame how pediatric practitioners interpret their patients’ bodies, development, behaviors, and psychological well-being. Pediatric assessments about gender, at both the individual and population level, shape how the categories of girl and boy are culturally understood. Pink and Blue: Gender, Culture, and the Health of Children (2021) seeks to understand the relationship between gender and the medical care of children by combing a historical perspective on gender and pediatrics with analysis of current debates and controversies in pediatric practice.

Editors and authors Elena Conis, Sandra Eder, Aimee Medeiros, Kathleen Bachynski, and Jessica Martucci will discuss a set of themes, including how gender is produced and applied in the clinic, what happens when this gendered knowledge is utilized in the nation, and how these two sites are mutually constitutive in producing a particular white, middle-class notion of American childhood. Discussants will reflect upon questions such as: How have changing ideas about gender, sex, culture, and science shaped pediatric practice over time? How has pediatrics defined gender for the nation? What role does race play in the gendered measurement of children? How have current social and political issues shaped our choice of research questions and the way we narrate our discoveries?

Hosts: Sandra Eder and Elena Conis

Participants: Aimee Medeiros, Kathleen Bachynski, and Jessica Martucci

Sandra Eder s.eder@berkeley.edu, https://history.berkeley.edu/sandra-eder, @EderUmmadum

Elena Conis econis@berkeley.edu, http://www.elenaconis.com/, @elenaconis

Aimee Medeiros aimee.medeiros@ucsf.edu, @AimeeMedeiros1
Kathleen Bachynski < kathleenbachynski@muhlenberg.edu>, @bachyns
Jessica Martucci < jmartucc@sas.upenn.edu>, @bioethistorian