Presenters: Charlotte Kroløkke, Professor, Department for the Study of Culture, SDU
and Peter Simonsen, Professor, Department for the Study of Culture, SDU
The title of the lecture is;
Humanistic Fertility Studies
Abstract:
Throughout the world, fertility rates are declining and governments urge their citizens to reproduce. In her 2018 New Year speech, Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg, for example, noted that “Norway needs more children.” In this presentation and based on previous cultural analytical research on fertility, I outline the ways that a humanities perspective grants new – and necessary - insights into fertility. In the presentation, we step beyond the question of demographics, reproductive biology and epidemiology and into an understanding of how reproductive citizens through national campaigns, reproductive travel, and the use of cryopreservation technologies reinstate as well as challenge conventional understandings of fertility.
Charlotte Kroløkke’s presentation will be introduced by Peter Simonsen, who will briefly address the many new (and some older) works of literary fiction that are about the question of fertility and that seem to attempt to yield special insight into the singular human experience of reproduction.
For additional information and information about registration please contact Lars Henrik Pedersen.