Barbara Duden is a German feminist and medical historian whose work has been pivotal in establishing the body as a site for historical inquiry. As an emeritus professor, she has significantly shaped academic discourse. She was also a co-founder of the journal Courage, which played an extensive role in informing the women's movement.
In Disembodying Women, Barbara Duden takes a closer look at this contemporary transformation of women's experience of pregnancy. She suggests that advances in technology and parallel changes in public discourse have refrained pregnancy as a managed process, the mother as an ecosystem, and the fetus as an endangered species.
In this study the author asserts that the most basic biological and medical terms we use to describe our own bodies - male and female, healthy or sick - are indeed cultural constructions. To illustrate this, Barbara Duden delves into the records of an 18th-century German physician who documented the medical histories of 1800 women of all ages and backgrounds, often in their own words