{"product_id":"presence-a-hidden-history-of-the-female-body-hardcover","title":"Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eErin Maglaque\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"[A] soulful, moving, sometimes cacophonous account of European women's experiences and interior lives from about 1500 to 1800.\"--Mattie Kahn, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA vibrant history of women's bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer--stylish, revelatory, and liberating. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eToday, we understand the mind and the body to be distinct; that the mind exercises control over the flesh. But as Erin Maglaque experienced the transformations of pregnancy, abortion, birth, and care-giving, she began to doubt the truth of that dichotomy. In an effort to better understand her experiences, she found herself reaching to the premodern past, a period when the strange rubbed up against the strikingly recognizable: when people accepted both levitation and the smallpox vaccine, witchcraft and universal gravitation; a time when understandings of the body and its capacity for thought were more expansive, and more unruly. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eStructured as a biography of the author's own body, from girlhood and adolescence, to sex and abortion, to feeding and caring for an infant, to her experience caring for someone as they were dying, Erin places her personal history into a deep dialogue with the premodern past. She explores the relation between imagination and gender, between maternal and historical subjectivity; she positions female desire as a practice with a past, and offers gentler and more forgiving understandings of housekeeping, pregnancy, early miscarriage, abortion, birth, sleeplessness, and breastfeeding. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFor readers of Amia Srinivasan's \u003ci\u003eThe Right to Sex\u003c\/i\u003e, Cat Bohannon's \u003ci\u003eEve\u003c\/i\u003e, and Olivia Laing's \u003ci\u003eEverybody\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePresence\u003c\/i\u003e is a unique experiment in historical thinking and embodied knowledge; a thoroughly researched, vibrant history of women's bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eErin Maglaque is a writer and historian. She teaches history at Durham University in the UK, and received her PhD from the University of Oxford. Erin writes regularly about history, gender, and feminism for the \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and other publications. \u003ci\u003ePresence \u003c\/i\u003eis her first book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 320\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.8 x 8.2 x 5.5 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e June 16, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53590903554413,"sku":"9781662603341","price":37.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1001\/0823\/9213\/files\/nH6gaIBAp69781662603341.webp?v=1784808040","url":"https:\/\/cleanfreaklab.myshopify.com\/products\/presence-a-hidden-history-of-the-female-body-hardcover","provider":"Clean Freak Lab","version":"1.0","type":"link"}