I am giving a paper, in Leuven, entitled `Penning the midwife`s experience: professional skills, publication and female agency in early modern Europe`. I shall compare the books by the midwives Louise Bourgeois (working in Paris, and publishing her Observations in 1609-1617-1626), Justine Siegemund (working in Brandenburg, and publishing The Court Midwife in 1690), and Sarah Stone (working in Taunton and then London, and publishing A Complete Practice of Midwifery in 1737).
This paper has been accepted is for a conference on female intellectual authority in early modern Europe. It is a great opportunity for me to reassess the balance between intellectual and practical authority in those exceptional midwives who published their professional observations - and also to bring their writings to colleagues working on other aspects of women`s lives in this period.
For more details of the conference, see https://portraitsandposes.wordpress.com/