Staff Profile

Dr Cathy McClive

(email at cathy.mcclive@durham.ac.uk)

Cathy McClive specialises in the social and cultural history of medicine, gender and sexuality in early modern France. Her doctoral work on perceptions of menstruation in France c. 1495-1761 has generated numerous articles and essays, and is currently being revised for publication as a monograph. Her new project, supported by a British Acadmy grant, explores notions of expertise and the figure of the medical-expert witness in civil and criminal proceedings in ancien-regime France. She is also interested in life-cyles, sexuality and fertility and false conceptions.

Research Interests

• Early modern French social and cultural history
• History of medicine, sexuality and the body
• Legal medicine
• Women and gender

Publications

Books: edited

• 2010 (co-edited with Pellegrin, Nicole) Femmes en fleurs, femmes en corps: sang, santé, sexualités du moyen âge aux lumières, Presses Universitaires de Saint-Etienne.

Essays in edited volumes

• 2010 'Quand les fleurs s’arrêtent: La ménopause et l’imaginaire médical aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles', in McClive, Cathy & Pellegrin, Nicole (eds.), Femmes en fleurs, femmes en corps: sang, santé et sexualités du moyen âge aux lumières, Presses Universitaires de Saint-Etienne, pp. 277-299
• 2007 'L’âge des fleurs: le passage de l’enfance à l’adolescence dans l’imaginaire médical du XVIIe siècle', in Anne DeFrance, Denis Lopez & François-Joseph Ruggiu (eds.), Regards sur l’enfance au XVIIe siècle, Gunter Narr, pp. 171-185
• 2007 (co-authored with Helen King) 'When is a foetus not a foetus?: diagnosing dalse conceptions in early modern France', in Veronique Dasen (ed.), L’embryon humain à travers l’histoire, Infolio, pp. 223-238
• 2005 'Engendrer durant les menstrues: devoir conjugal et interdit sexuel à l'époque moderne', in Redon, O., Sallmann, L. & Steinberg, S. (eds.), Le Désir et le Goût: Une autre Histoire (XIIIe-XVIIIe siècles), Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, pp. 245-263
• 2005 'Menstrual knowledge and medical practice in France, c. 1555-1761', in Gillian Howie & Andrew Shail (eds.), Menstruation: A Cultural History, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 76-89

Journal papers: academic

• 2012 '‘Witnessing of the Hands’ and Eyes: Surgeons as Medico-Legal Experts in the Claudine Rouge Affair, Lyon, 1767', Eighteenth-Century Studies 35, pp. 489-503
• 2009 'Masculinity on Trial: Penises, Hermaphrodites and the Uncertain Male Body in Early Modern France', History Workshop Journal 68, pp. 45-68
• 2008 'Blood and Expertise: The Trials of the Female Medical Expert in the Ancien Regime Courtroom', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, pp. 86-108
• 2002 'The hidden truths of the belly: the uncertainties of pregnancy in early modern Europe', Social History of Medicine 15, pp. 209-227

Journal papers: online

• 2008 'Gender and the Body in Medical Writings c. 1700-1830', Defining Gender, 1450-1910 pp.

Teaching Areas

• Health care and medicine in early modern Europe
• Society and culture in early modern france