Tara Mulder

media release: A Room of One's Own is thrilled to welcome Tara Mulder in celebration of her forthcoming book A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome. 

This is an in-person event at A Room of One's Own Bookstore. 

About the book

A bold new history of women's health and midwifery, brought to life through ancient women's stories of pregnancy and birth.

In the well-trod history of the Roman Empire, a pivotal moment has long gone unnoticed: It was in ancient Rome that medical men first set their sights on childbirth, the traditional domain of female midwives.

Taking us to the dawn of Western obstetrics, A Womb of One's Own offers a feminist account of how, against a long tradition of midwifery, male doctors began claiming authority in reproductive matters, with an emphasis on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. Their intrusion paved the way for the later criminalization of midwives and the cloaking of childbirth in secrecy and shame.

Yet communities of Roman women continued to help each other through the journey from preconception to postpartum, guided by their own experience and the expertise of midwives. Tara Mulder recovers stories of ancient women living and resisting as they sought autonomy over their bodies and their health. Recounting their experiences in vivid, intimate detail, she reveals how old our modern conflicts about birth truly are.

Miranda Welch, MA, CPM, LM is a licensed midwife with a home birth practice in Madison.  She earned her master’s degree in gender and women’s studies from the University of Wisconsin before leaving academia to pursue community birth work. A life-long activist, community-builder and learner, Miranda lives in Madison with her wife and fur babies

Tara Mulder is assistant professor of classical and ancient near eastern studies with affiliation in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As the daughter of a homebirth midwife, she has assisted in more than two dozen births.