Body/Politics demonstrates how many of the controversies in modern science involve or invoke the feminine body as their battleground. This groundbreaking collection addresses such scientific issues as artificial fertilization, the "e;crisis"e; in childbirth management,and the medical invention of "e;female"e; maladies and the debates surrounding them. In the process it makes an important attempt to remedy the traditional division between science and non-science by focusing on the interconnection of literary, social, and scientific discourses concerning the female body. The editors have brought together noted feminist scholars and critics from various fields. Contributers include Susan Bordo, Mary Ann Doane, Donna Haraway, Emily Martin, Mary Poovey and Paula A. Treichler.

Introduction; Chapter 1 In Parenthesis: Immaculate Conceptions and Feminine Desire, Mary Jacobus; Chapter 2 Speaking of the Body: Mid-Victorian Constructions of Female Desire, May Poovey; Chapter 3 Female Circulation: Medical Discourse and Popular Advertising in the Mid-Victorian Era, Sally Shuttleworth; Chapter 4 Science and Women's Bodies: Forms of Anthropological Knowledge, Emily Martin; Chapter 5 Reading the Slender Body I would like to thank the Rockefeller Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies/Ford Foundation for their generous support, and Le Moyne College, for graciously granting me early sabbatical leave to work on Food, Fashion and Power, of which this paper (in modified form) will be a chapter (Berkeley: University of California Press, forthcoming.) Thanks to Mary Jacobus, Sally Shuttleworth, and especially to Mario Moussa for comments and editorial suggestions., Susan Bordo; Chapter 6 Feminism, Medicine, and the Meaning of Childbirth, Paula A. Treichler; Chapter 7 Investment Strategies for the Evolving Portfolio of Primate FemalesThis essay is a revised version of a chapter in my book, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1989)., Donna Haraway; Chapter 8 Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine, Mary Ann Doane; Chapter 9 From Secrets of Life to Secrets of Death, Evelyn Fox Keller;