Reproductive Story Research Articles

An immersive simulation strategy to teach canine vaginal cytology: A multi-centre study.

Vaginal cytology (VC) is an essential technique for monitoring the bitch's estrus cycle. Currently, animal-free teaching methodologies have not been investigated for VC. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate an immersive simulation with a VC model and augmented reality tools. Students (n = 219) from four universities were enrolled, having learning stations with models for practising VC that provided immediate feedback on the technique. Augmented reality tools comprised QR codes that endorsed students to short videos of owners' avatars reporting the clinical reproductive story of the simulated animals and slides with QR codes leading to microscopy slide navigation videos. Proestrus, estrus, diestrus, anestrus and vaginitis were identified in the learning stations. The students' perceptions were evaluated through questionnaires assessing satisfaction, motivation, confidence, impact on learning and diagnostic accuracy. Before the immersive simulation, students had no experience with VC, being afraid of doing a VC with a live dog. Almost all the students considered practicing VC as essential and 94% reported that repeating the procedure (>2 times) was the most important parameter for learning. The simulation activity lasted ≈3 h and significantly improved the confidence of students, being less afraid of doing a VC in a live animal. Slide navigation videos improved the diagnostic accuracy of the estrus cycle stage, and students diagnosed the estrus and vaginitis cases more accurately. The immersive simulation strategy allowed repeated practice in a safe, motivated and standardized environment, being appraised by students as an essential strategy for learning VC.

It's the Climb: The Reproductive Journey and Well-being of Filipino Women with Infertility

According to studies, infertility is often ignored in developing countries despite its impact on well-being. This qualitative study aimed to explore how Filipino women with infertility gave meaning to their well-being and experiences in trying to conceive. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight women, while three psychologists and two reproductive doctors were consulted as additional data sources. Utilizing interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), four themes were generated: walking trails of my reproductive story; hazards along the way: stressors of infertility; lost in the wilderness: toll on mental health and well-being; and looking back, I am in awe: journey of ascending from waiting and exploring. A simulacrum, "T.T.C. Journey Map," was developed from these themes. The findings added to the limited literature on reproductive health and well-being, which can be used as a basis to create a psychosocial program to address fertility-related concerns and ensure well-being among women with infertility.

Cultural Dimensions of Early Pregnancy Loss: Spiritual and Religious Issues

Nearly one in five clinically confirmed pregnancies ends in a loss before 20 weeks (Bardos et al., 2015). Despite the prevalence of miscarriage, many women and partners experience a lack of acknowledgment and support while also encountering complicated concerns related to the intersection of perinatal loss, culture, religious and spiritual issues, medical treatment, their reproductive stories, and grief (Randolph et al., 2015). Counselors working with these clients must address complex cultural considerations. As such, we review key cultural and religious/spiritual issues related to early pregnancy loss and offer recommendations for practice based on the current literature in the context of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (2009) counseling competencies.

Telling Reproductive Stories: Social Scripts, Relationality and Donor Conception

Storytelling is a fundamental part of human interaction; it is also deeply social and political in nature. In this article, I explore reproductive storytelling as a phenomenon of sociological consequence. I do so in the context of donor conception, which used to be managed through secrecy but where children are now perceived ‘to have the right’ to know about their genetic origins. I draw on original qualitative data with families of donor conceived children, and bringing my data into conversation with social script theory and the concept of relationality, I investigate the disjuncture between the value now placed on openness and storytelling, and the absence of an existing social script by which to do so. I show the nuanced ways in which this absence plays out on relational playing-fields, within multidimensional, intergenerational relationships. I suggest that in order to understand sociologically the significance and process of reproductive storytelling, it is vital to keep both the role of social scripts, and embedded relationality, firmly in view.

Aspectos de la salud sexual y reproductiva de las mujeres adolescentes de tres comunidades del Resguardo Indígena San Lorenzo, Caldas: trabajo doméstico, partería tradicional y procesos organizativos de mujeres indígenas

Introducción: se busca comprender la salud sexual y reproductiva de las adolescentes de las comunidades de San José, Tunzará y Veneros del Resguardo Indígena San Lorenzo, departamento de Caldas, Colombia, desde una visión que abarque la interrelación entre una descripción de las vivencias y percepciones individuales del comportamiento reproductivo, principalmente de la primera menstruación, una caracterización del acceso a los sistemas médicos para su salud sexual y reproductiva, como la partería tradicional, y un análisis de esta a partir de algunas condiciones grupales y estructurales, como el trabajo doméstico de las mujeres indígenas en las ciudades y los procesos organizativos de ellas. Desarrollo: para esta comprensión, se optó por el paradigma cualitativo, con una metodología etnográfica basada principalmente en observación, observación participante, 21 entrevistas abiertas, 30 entrevistas semiestructuradas y 3 grupos de discusión, con el complemento de una técnica cuantitativa que implicó la realización de 23 historias reproductivas. Conclusiones: se visibiliza cómo la salud sexual y reproductiva de las adolescentes indígenas requiere de una comprensión basada en la contextualización e interrelación de los niveles individuales, grupales y estructurales que influyen y afectan a las mujeres indígenas para poder adecuar un sistema de salud propio e intercultural.

Using a Feminist Paradigm (Intersectionality) to Study Conservative Women: The Case of Pro-life Activists in Italy

AbstractThis article builds on ethnographic research concerning the Italian pro-life movement and argues for the use of intersectionality theory in studying conservative women. The article suggests, first, that understanding conservative movements necessitates linking their political claims to the social identities of their activists, as would be the case for any other social movement (e.g., feminism). These social identities are as complex and intersectional as any other: a white, upper-class pro-life activist is no less intersectional than a black feminist from a poor background. Concomitantly, there is no unique feminism, but rather a plurality of feminisms, a diversity that intersectionality facilitates the identification of. The same is true for pro-life movements, but scholars tend to use the singular form to talk about conservatism; in this article, I explore the use of the plural to show that pro-life women do not constitute a monolithic group. On the contrary, these women are diverse in terms of their reproductive stories, their working status, and their class, race, and sexual practices, and this diversity translates into different ways of being pro-life. Second, recognizing this complexity does not suggest a natural link between feminism and conservatism. Alternatively, I suggest that a better understanding of conservative women can only be reached if they are studied on their own terms.

Parental smoking, maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the risk of neuroblastoma in children. A pooled analysis of the ESCALE and ESTELLE French studies.

Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extra-cranial tumour in children. Little is known about the aetiology of NB. The early age at onset and the embryonic nature suggest a role for perinatal exposures. We conducted a pooled analysis of two French national population-based case-control studies to explore whether there was an association between parental smoking and alcohol consumption and the risk of NB. The mothers of 357 NB cases and 1,783 controls from general population, frequency matched by age and sex, were interviewed on demographic, socioeconomic and perinatal characteristics, maternal reproductive story, and life-style and childhood environment. Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate pooled odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. A meta-analysis of our findings with those of previous studies was also conducted. Maternal smoking during pregnancy was slightly more often reported for the cases (24.1%) than for the controls (19.7%) (OR 1.3 [95% CI 0.9-1.7]; summary OR from meta-analysis 1.1 [95% CI 1.0-1.3]. Paternal smoking in the year before child's birth were not associated with NB as independent exposure (OR 1.1 [95% CI 0.9-1.4] but the association was stronger when both parents reported having smoked during pregnancy (OR 1.5 [95% CI 1.1-2.1]. No association was observed with maternal alcohol intake during pregnancy (OR 1.0 [95% CI 0.8-1.4], summary OR from meta-analysis 1.0 [95% CI 0.9-1.2]. Our findings provide some evidence of an association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and NB and add another reason to recommend that women refrain from smoking during pregnancy.

Reproductive trauma: Psychotherapy for pregnancy loss and infertility clients from a reproductive story perspective.

The reproductive story offers a unique way to conceptualize pregnancy loss and infertility. This article describes the development of the reproductive story from early childhood on, and focuses on the devastating losses when the story does not unfold as originally hoped. Regardless of the type of reproductive trauma that clients experience, the underlying psychological constructs of grief are the same. The goal is to help clients work through their grief and loss, accept that their story can be edited and rewritten, and come away with a positive new ending. This paper illustrates how to utilize the reproductive story with infertility and pregnancy loss clients in psychotherapy. Using clinical illustrations, interventions for the treatment of perinatal grief, particularly in the context of infertility, are discussed. Specific suggestions are offered to help clients rethink past ideals, cope with their current trauma, and make constructive decisions in their effort to build their future family. (PsycINFO Database Record

Parenthood after reproductive loss: How psychotherapy can help with postpartum adjustment and parent-infant attachment.

Parenting after pregnancy loss is often complicated for people who have not effectively grieved the loss and worked through the trauma. Reproductive losses can trigger shame and self-doubt, damage the sense of self-as-parent, and inflict narcissistic injuries, which, in turn, may impede the resolution of grief. If not addressed, these unresolved feelings may be projected onto subsequent children, potentially disrupting attachment relationships and the child's sense of self. The reproductive story, a lifelong internal narrative that comprises the thoughts, feelings, and hopes about how parenting and adulthood will unfold, and forms the core of parental identity, can be used as a tool in helping parents understand the depth of their feelings, integrate current and past losses into the self, and resolve grief. The authors discuss 3 crucial aspects of intervention with parents who have had pregnancy losses, aimed both at healing the parents themselves and at protecting attachment relationships with subsequent children: (a) initially staying present-focused and engaging with the painful details of the loss experience, to normalize and validate the patient's grief and trauma, counteract shame, and begin repairing narcissistic injuries; (b) eliciting the reproductive story to identify and integrate past losses, and in its revision, to allow for hope and repair; and (c) attending to both acknowledged and denied grief. The challenges and satisfactions of working with this population and potential countertransference reactions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

God’s Will

This autoethnographic essay examines the complexity of reproductive storytelling. Framed around a pair of interwoven reproductive stories, and located within a reproductive justice framework, it asserts that women’s stories of fertility, pregnancy, contraception, and abortion have, both historically and in the contemporary period, been marked by silences. Such silences, the result of political, legal, social, and moral forces beyond women’s control, have limited women’s abilities to share and reflect on the intricate negotiations that have shaped their reproductive lives, and as a consequence, have also limited their capacities for telling their reproductive stories. As this article argues, all reproductive stories are complex stories. Too often, however, those complex nuances that shape women’s reproductive lives and stories remain hidden, unspoken, and secret. Making room for the intricacies of reproductive stories and storytelling can also, this article argues, offer greater nuance to continuing debates around reproductive rights and reproductive justice.

Reproduction and Queer Theory: Between Lee Edelman'sNo Futureand J. M. Coetzee'sSlow Man

In a queer-theory reading of Charles Dickens'sA Christmas Carolin the 2004 polemicNo Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Lee Edelman relied on a narrow concept of reproduction as procreative heteronormativity anchored in heterosexual sex. He left untold the other story of reproduction: our daily reproduction in the service of capitalism. Marxist and materialist feminist theories of reproduction remind us that we all engage in reproductive work and that women have traditionally been considered natural providers of this work. A reading of J. M. Coetzee'sSlow Man, in which a male protagonist depends on the domestic labor of a migrant woman, provides a counterpoint toNo Future.

Reproduction inside/outside: Medical imaging and the domestication of assisted reproductive technologies

Contemporary medical imaging technologies produce images on the level of human cells. As a result of such images, egg and sperm cells have become well-known artefacts of popular culture. Medical imaging technology has transformed these gametes from invisible matter integrated in biological processes within the body to identifiable objects. The visualisation of egg and sperm cells has literally lifted the process of human reproduction out of the female body and made the gametes appear as protagonists in the story of human reproduction. The article argues that visualisation of the gametes and the central role they play in contemporary imaginations of reproduction may offer vital contributions to the rather rapid acceptance and normalisation of assisted reproduction.

Reproducing Stories: Strategic Narratives of Teen Pregnancy and Motherhood

Abstract Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and classed social narratives on adolescent childbearing in the United States. These narratives posit teen childbearing as an unequivocal social, health, and economic problem, although some scholars and policy makers construct alternative narratives that focus on inequalities and propose different perspectives on causes and consequences. Narrative inquiry that analyzes how stories are produced and utilized can enable a more nuanced approach to complex social problems. We conducted 19 individual, in-depth, and semistructured interviews with young mothers ages 16 to 21 who attend a community-based alternative education program in a low-income northeastern city. Interviews were analyzed using thematic narrative techniques. The young mothers we interviewed used a process of strategic negotiation to distance themselves from prevailing social and cultural stories about the problem of teen motherhood. Participants demonstrated this strategic process through their attempts to assuage stigma and construct unproblematic identities. Young mothers reproduced and reinterpreted a variety of circulating narratives on teen childbearing. They reproduced dominant narratives through pathology, missed adolescence, and redemption stories, and reinterpreted dominant narratives through stories of stratified reproduction, sexual health education, and stigmatization and surveillance. Our participants' narratives illustrate the need to think broadly about the meanings of early pregnancy and motherhood in terms of how they play out in research and policymaking. We call for a discursive shift in ways of knowing about and doing research and policy surrounding teen childbearing.

What Makes a Baby by C. Silverberg

Silverberg, Cory. What Makes a Baby. Illus. Fiona Smyth. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012. PrintIn What Makes a Baby, sex educator and author Cory Silverberg tells the story that makes most adults squirm: the story about human reproduction, gestation, and birth. However, this isn’t your typical mythical tale of a growing “flower” or a story about the nuclear family with “mommy and daddy.” Instead, we have some of the real players: egg and sperm cells, uteruses, and human beings.These real baby-making players are playfully illustrated by Fiona Smyth, a Montreal born artist and graphic novelist. In typical Smyth style, What Makes a Baby’s pages are bright and colourful, featuring a lot of purple, hot pink, and blue. Human beings are also full of colour (pink, orange, green, yellow and purple), and in most of the story they are depicted gender neutral –like smiley, vaguely human creatures. This aligns with the book’s premise to be “a book for every kind of family,” as it admirably avoids the temptation to link baby making with traditional notions of femininity and masculinity; the colourful depictions also keep this reproductive story lively and somewhat whimsical.Silverberg’s story further follows a simple, straightforward narrative. He states that some bodies have eggs, some bodies have sperm, and some bodies do not; that some babies are born with the help of midwives and some with doctors; that some babies come out of a vagina and some babies come out by the belly button. The description of eggs and sperm is particularly nuanced, explaining that each cell is made up of stories from the body out of which it came; these “stories” are then shared to become something new. These descriptions promote the book’s mission to represent all kinds of families and people, but they also turn a complicated story into an intelligible one for a young child.However, What Makes a Baby has some pitfalls. Firstly, there is no mention of sexual intercourse. The egg and sperm “swirl together in a special kind of dance,” but there is no other discussion of that first step in how babies are made—the part that is typically the most awkward to explain. Further, the abstract representation of people might be confusing for children, especially as people are drawn differently in the latter half of the book, allowing for a less concrete understanding of what really makes a baby.Thus, this story makes some great strides towards more inclusive and honest discussions of baby-making, but it doesn’t supply the whole picture. This book is ideal for a preschool or elementary school library and would work in concert with other stories on reproduction.Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Jessica ThorlaksonJessica Thorlakson is a Public Services Librarian at the University of Alberta’s H. T. Coutts Education and Physical Education Library. She has a background in English Literature and enjoys little more than reading a good book and drinking some tea.

Littératures africaines et Antiquité: redire le face-à-face de l’Afrique et de l’Occident by Bernard Mouralis

Mouralis, Bernard. Littératures africaines et Antiquité: redire le face-à-face de l’Afrique et de l’Occident. Paris: Champion, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7453-2174-9. Pp. 220. 19 a. Mouralis’s examination of the African writers’uses of Classical literature is a long overdue work of scholarship. Drawing on the research of previous scholars and his own work on literary giants like Senghor, Beti, and Mudimbe, he investigates ways in which Classical culture contributes to a fuller understanding of African aesthetics, history, and philosophy.As a result, this expansive inquiry enters into new territory in its complex, nuanced reconsideration of this relationship. The thematically organized study opens with a definition of what constitutes ‘la bibliothèque antique.’ Mouralis illustrates that the great disparity in the Classical corpus used by African writers is due to their varied educational experiences. He concludes this chapter by hypothesizing that the elusiveness of Classics in African letters might also be a consequence of the intellectual developments of the âge classique (39). While the conclusion is not surprising, the description of the educational environment in colonial Africa and the extensive cataloging of works that describe the role of Classics in twentieth-century African education render this chapter especially rich. Additionally, those who wish to investigate further the role of particular Classic texts in colonial education will find the bibliographic references most useful. Mouralis devotes the remainder of his study’s attention to fleshing out specific examples of Classical literature’s application, which he categorizes in the following three chapters as: “Usages rhétoriques et esthétiques de la bibliothèque antique”; “Usages historiques de la bibliothèque antique”; “Usages philosophiques de la bibliothèque antique.”As readers who are familiar with Mouralis’s previous scholarship might expect, these chapters provide thoughtful analysis of key passages in an array of important Francophone African works. For example, in the second chapter on rhetorical and aesthetic usages, Mouralis examines Senghor’s keen ability to incorporate into his own poetics the linguistic principles of Classical language as a system which subsequently forms an important component of Senghorian poetics (52). Despite fewer direct citations of Classics, the third chapter convincingly illustrates how Antiquity has advanced academic discussion of African history. In particular, Mouralis shows that C.A. Diop, Senghor, and Mudimbe cultivate a productive polemic on such fundamental theories as Afrocentrism and Négritude precisely because of the knowledge that each possesses of Classical historical texts. Little by little, he broadens the reader’s understanding of the ways Classical civilization connects to Africa. In the fourth chapter, Mouralis tackles the challenging philosophical concepts of being, epistemology, politics, and the nature and function of philosophy in representative African writers; each of which manifest evidence of an inescapable return to a Classic cultural inheritance. He concludes the study by illustrating further “intersections” (chapter 5) between African letters and Antiquity through four themes, which readers will recognize as key to postcolonial studies,i.e.,anthropology,colonization,bilingualism, and the Other. The thought-provoking examples of intersections in this final chapter offer some of the most compelling evidence for his thesis; which is to say, that the 238 FRENCH REVIEW 87.2 Reviews 239 concerns of Classical civilization are indeed universal and relevant to studies of contemporary Africa. Mount St. Mary’s University (MD) Marco D. Roman Read, Kirk D. Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction . Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7546-6632-5. Pp. xiv + 205. $99.95. Birthing Bodies demonstrates the benefits of engaging a variety of genres in the discussion of a topos that can be read both literally and figuratively, for the birthing bodies in question are corporeal and textual. Further, by including theorists ranging from Thomas Lacqueur to Mary Daly to Judith Butler, Read deftly explores the intersections of gender, sex, sexuality, and performance in this corpus. As he examines a broad range of texts—poetry, novels, medical treatises, satires, polemics, travelogues— Read“dismantl[es] received ideas about gendered bodies”(12) and exposes the unease women’s bodies generate as well as how other bodies, male or hermaphroditic, appropriate the process of generation. Chapter one,“Spying at the Lying-in,” highlights the...

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction by Kirk D. Read

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction by Kirk D. Read

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction

Risk Factors for Premenopausal Breast Cancer: A Case-control Study in Uruguay

In order to thoroughly analyze risk factors of breast cancer (BC) in premenopausal Uruguayan women, a case-control study was carried out at the Pereira Rossell Women's Hospital, Montevideo, where 253 incident BC cases and 497 frequency-matched healthy controls were interviewed on menstrual and reproductive story, were administered a short food frequency questionnaire and undertook a series of body measurements necessary to calculate body composition and somatotype. Odds ratio (OR) coefficients were taken as estimates of relative risk derived from unconditional logistic regression. Among the classical risk factors, only the family history of BC in first degree relatives was significantly associated with risk of premenopausal BC (OR=2.20, 95% CI 1.33-3.62). Interestingly, this risk factor was found to be stronger in women of ages >40 (OR=4.05, 95% CI 2.10-7.81), late menarche (OR= 2.39, 95% CI 1.18-4.85), early age for their first delivery (OR=3.02, 95% CI 1.26-7.22), short time between menarche and first delivery (OR=3.22, 95% CI 1.29-8.07), and with high parity (OR=4.10, 95% CI 1.79-9.36), although heterogeneity was detected only for age and parity. High consumption of red meat was positively associated with the disease risk (OR=2.20, 95% CI 1.35-3.60), in the same way as fried foods (OR=1.79, 95% CI 1.12-2.84). Conversely, a high intake of plant foods displayed a protective effect (OR=0.41, 95% CI 0.26-0.65). Except for hypertension (OR=1.55, 95% CI 1.03-2.35), none of the analyzed components of metabolic syndrome were associated to BC risk. Particular increases of risk for premenopausal BC were found for family history in first degree relatives in certain subsets derived from the menstrual-reproductive history. Preventive strategies could broaden their scope if new studies confirm the present results, in view of the limited prevention measures that premenopausal BC currently has.

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (review)

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (review)

Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (review)

Reviewed by: Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction Sybil M. Jack Read, Kirk D., Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World), Farnham, Ashgate, 2011; hardback; pp. xiii, 205; 14 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £55.00; ISBN 9780754666325. Like many literary scholars today, Kirk Read has added works of lesser or no special standing to the canonical literary works once deemed to have the literary merit worthy of study. These include the work of Catherine and Madeleine des Roches, Les Serees, and the satirical work Les Caquets de l’Accouchée which have hitherto mainly been the preserve of historians and discussed at their basic literal level of sense. Once mainly seen as a commentary on the phenomenon of the ‘ruelle’ and the literary and factional history of the Court, this written material is now the subject of abstruse literary analysis and the boundaries between historical and literary approaches have been broken down. This is particularly evident in studies like this one, addressed to aspects of women’s lives that were once regarded as private and to the long-running discussion of the involvement of men in the birthing process and their preoccupation with the unclean aspects and yet attractions of the body. Read uses the normal list of obstetric works as set out in bibliographies such as that of Valerie Worth-Stylianou, that are well known and already widely exploited and also the stories of births and birthing that literary sixteenth-century thinkers retained from the classical past. The materials available for France are rather more substantial than most countries and over the last two decades new scholarly editions of some of the more important sources have made studies such as this one easier. Even so, more weight is being placed on the work of Louise Bourgeois (Boursier) than it can perhaps bear. Read, however, limits himself to presenting her work as a literary oeuvre that provides him with some examples of the woman’s sense of modesty and reluctance to endure male sight or touch. He is not, in fact, directly concerned with the practice of childbirth in the period but with the idea of the body, control of the production of offspring, and unnatural events. He focuses his discussion of particular examples against the increasingly critical controversy over how the nature of childbirth was seen by the observer and the observed, the controlled and the controller, the speaker and the audience. He is especially interested in the appropriation of the female body – in fantasy or reality – by a male and vice-versa. The instability of gender identity is critical to his thought. The chapters in this book, each of which focuses on a specific aspect of the birthing body such as touching and telling, are only loosely linked to a [End Page 244] central argument; they approach it from different texts, different periods and aspects of birth such as hermaphrodites, the birth of monsters, and stories of male parturition. Read’s main preoccupation is the aim and ambition of men in their representation of relationships created by the processes of birth and the extent to which their ideal goal might be parthenogenesis. The argument that lack of control over childbearing creates insecurity in their sense of authority and perhaps identity meshes well with Lianne McTavish’s arguments, but if this is the conclusion Read was attempting to reach, it needs to be more tightly presented. He might perhaps examine more closely how far the overt purpose of a text like Les Serées, which acknowledges its purpose as bringing together ideas and authorities that were already known to a literary audience, can be shaped to elucidate gendered anxieties of the time. He reads his texts in search of various levels of symbolism, some of which are perhaps counter-intuitive or questionable. He would do well to engage with the long-running debate over when or whether symbolism that would not have been recognized by the authors may reasonably be extracted from a text. His authors would have recognized the standard fourfold medieval religious divisions that were employed in glossing...