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“Comrades in the Labor Room,” Women’s History Month Lecture

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the University’s Council on the Status of Women, History of Medicine Society and Iowa Women’s Archives will sponsor a reception and a public lecture by University of Iowa History Professor Paula Michaels.

Wednesday, March 10
4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Iowa Women’s Archives on the third floor of the Main Library. 

The festivities will begin at 4:30 p.m. with a reception featuring light refreshments.  At 5:15 p.m., Theatre Arts graduate student Janet Schlapkohl will entertain with “There’s This Thing Called Lamaze,” a brief monologue and song about natural childbirth in the 1970s.  

At 5:30 p.m., Professor Michaels will begin her lecture, “Comrades in the Labor Room: The International Story of the Lamaze Method, 1950-1980,” which reveals the origins of the Lamaze method in the Soviet Union, its promotion by the French Communist Party, and the deliberate efforts to obscure these leftist ties that made Lamaze palatable to U.S. women during the Cold War era. 

Please join us for any or all of these activities.

For more information, contact Sharon Lake, Chair of Herstory Committee; Kären Mason, Iowa Women’s Archives, at 319-335-5068; or  Ed Holtum, History of Medicine Society, at 319-335-9154.