Our two-day conference will be opened with a reference to the artwork Pleiemødre i lagmannsretten ( Foster Mothers in Court ), by the renowned Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, reproduced on the cover of our book of abstracts. The narrative behind Munch’s work is the real trial of foster mothers that took place in Oslo in 1902. These were women who had taken in infants for money but were accused of neglecting them or deliberately allowing them to die. Munch depicts them not as individualized figures, but as a row of distorted, mask-like faces, underscoring both the collective social stigma and the grotesque spectacle of the trial. The painting is less a documentary record than a biting commentary on the intersection of poverty, crime, and motherhood.
The central theme is social injustice: the women are at once perpetrators and victims, condemned by the law yet also products of poverty and desperation. The stylized, almost caricature-like treatment underlines the tension among satire, social critique, and tragedy.
The symbolism of Munch’s work can also be read in a much broader sense. In fact, it reveals precisely the motifs that form the guiding thread of our conference. How and why, throughout history, have mothers been judged? Who were the actors that judged them? Who acted as their allies or advocates, and who as their accusers? Which systemic circumstances and socio-political barriers contributed to mothers finding themselves symbolically in the dock – or perhaps managing to avoid it? How did mothers themselves experience these infamous processes?
The conference papers will seek answers to these and other questions related to motherhood and reproductive rights in a variety of sources, ranging from court records to oral testimonies, and across a broad chronological spectrum, from the eighteenth century to the present. They will also address diverse geographical settings, from our own Slovenian context to, for instance, the Ottoman Empire and India.
PROGRAMME
DAY 1
Thursday, September 25, 2025
09:00–09:30 Registration
09:30–10:00 Welcome speeches / Introduction
Sašo Jerše , Associate Dean of Doctoral Studies (3rd Cycle) and Research at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Rok Stergar , Head of the research program Slovenian History (ARIS) at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Ana Cergol Paradiž , Principal Investigator, Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
10:00–11:00 Keynote lecture
Susan Grayzel : Writing the Pregnant Body into the History of Modern War
11:00–11:10 Coffee break
11:10–12:00 War and motherhood
Meta Remec : The Dead Who Might Return: Widows and Families in Legal and Emotional Limbo After the First World War
Kornelija Ajlec : Reproductive Politics and Public Discourse on Women’s Fertility in Slovenia During the Post-World War II Reconstruction Era
12:00–12:20 Coffee break
12:20–13:30 Single mothers
Dragica Čeč : Experiences of Motherhood Among Unmarried Mothers, 1780–1840: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Care of Illegitimate Children
Dunja Dobaja : Unwed Mothers in the Occupation Legal System in Slovenia 1941–1945
Tanja Buda : When Violence Leads to Separation: Social Work and the Silencing of Perpetrators in Slovenia, 1955–1980
13:30–14:30 Lunch break
14:30–15:20 Demography, politics and ideology
Marta Botiková : The Contradictory Nature of Restricted Reproduction from a Historical-Ethnological Perspective
Victor Strazzeri : “Motherhood as Social Value”: Italian Communist Women’s Conception of Motherhood in the 1970s
15:20–15:40 Coffee break
15:40–16:30 Abortion
Alena Lochmannová : “ Vyhánění dítěte ” – Abortion Practices, Public Discourse, and Women’s Strategies in Czechoslovakia in the First Half of the 20th Century
Ivana Dobrivojević Tomić : From “Assistance that Society Provides” to Women’s Right. Discussions on Abortion in Socialist Yugoslavia
DAY 2
Friday, September 26, 2025
10:00–11:10 “Unfit” parents and science
Martin Kuhar : Eugenics in the Independent State of Croatia
Ana Antić : Schizophrenia and Bad Motherhood: Globalising the Diagnosis
Shilpi Rajpal : Motherhood and the Mental Hygiene Movement in India
11:10–11:30 Coffee break
11:30–12:40 Childbirth
Katarina Keber : The Emergence of Midwives in Carniola within the 19th Century Habsburg Public Healthcare System
Lisa Füchte : Giving Birth to the New Soviet Man: Mother and Infant Protection as Biopolitics after the Russian Revolution of 1917
Almira Sharafeeva : Pain Relief in Childbirth or Military Strategy? Obstetric Anesthesia as a Soviet Biopolitical Project in the 1930s
12:40–13:40 Lunch break
13:40–14:50 Childcare
Nilab Saeedi : Muslim Milk, Jewish Blood: The Case of Milk Kinship in Ottoman Mosul
Urška Bratož : A Thin Line Between Survival and Premature Death: On Infant Mortality in Koper (1880–1919)
Ganna Zaremba-Kosovych : Reproductive Experiences of Women with Disabilities in Ukraine in the First Quarter of the 21st Century
14:50–15:50 Closing remarks
Ana Cergol Paradiž , Principal Investigator