Maja Bondestam

Professor at Department of History of Science and Ideas

E-mail:: maja.bondestam@idehist.uu.se
Visiting address:: Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3P
Postal address:: Box 629
751 26 UPPSALA

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Short presentation

I teach and do research in history of science and ideas and am especially interested in the history of the body. De utomordentliga, my latest book, came in 2022 and examines extraordinary births and the concept of monstrosity in Swedish medicine and natural history, 1600-1830. The study is carried out within the research program Medicine at the borders of Life, http://www.medicalborders.se

Keywords

Research

My research interests include the cultural history of the body in the shift from the early modern to the modern period, with a particular focus on modernized concepts of identity (gender, age, class, sexuality, race, physical normality and deviance). Published articles and books connect to Swedish and European history of medicine, gender studies, monstrosity studies, corporeal temporality, and early modern natural history.

I have recently finished my part of the research program "Medicine at the borders of Life" (described above, under Biografi), which resulted in one monography, one edited volume, four book capters and a couple of reviews. In relation to the program, Helena Franzén and I also arranged the workshop: Extraordinary bodies in early modern nature and culture. An international workshop at Uppsala University, Sweden, October 26-27, 2017.

My ongoing research is about "Sexual selves in modernity: Intimacy and the Swedish culture of solitude, 1930-50". Here I research the reformation of sexual relations outside of marriage in as expressed in politics, medicine, education and cultural debate in the middle of the 20th century.