About
"‘Entirely in the Hands of the Female’: Plausible Deniability and the Nineteenth-Century Contraceptive Underground"
This project explores networks of information about contraception in the long nineteenth-century U.S. My research examines how contraceptive advice circulated in print culture and informal networks under the cover of public debates about menstrual regularity, determining pregnancy, and Malthusian approaches to population control. Far from being hidden underground, I argue, methods for preventing or ending pregnancies were shared openly because they were tied to national priorities of expanding the (white, middle-class) nation and normative ideas about women’s health and fertility.
Sigrid Anderson is Librarian for English Language and Literature.
