"Modeling for Motherhood": Visions of Maternity from the Ebling Library Collections

September 8, 2025 - January 5, 2025

“Modeling for Motherhood” brings together five centuries of publishing on pregnancy and birth to highlight the role of textual objects in the development of modern obstetrics. Through medical illustrations, birthing guides, and pedagogical works, the exhibition traces the Western medical canon’s parallel functions up to the 1950s, both as a tool to legitimize male intervention in birthing spaces and as a force in defining cultural expectations around pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum experience. These normalizing forces are juxtaposed with radical and feminist birth texts of the midwifery movement, used to challenge obstetrical hegemonies in the second half of the twentieth century. By understanding these legacies of both conventional and countercultural obstetrical works, we can interrogate our own assumptions about what modern maternity is or should be.

"Modeling for Motherhood" is currently on view in Ebling Library's Historical Reading Room, located on the south side of the library's third floor. Open hours vary; we recommend contacting the Historical Services team to check before visiting.