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Sydni Zastre

History, University of Birmingham

Thesis title:

Writing the pregnant body in Britain, 1918-1945

I am a social and cultural historian of twentieth-century Britain, with particular interests in pregnancy, motherhood, and the use of narrative and micro-historical methods. My thesis uses women’s writing—letters, diaries, novels, and autobiography—to understand how pregnancy felt, what it meant, and how these experiences were expressed in women’s own words. Drawing upon archives including the Marie Stopes Married Love correspondence and the Mass Observation collections, I aim to write pregnancy (back) into a historiography where it has too often been overlooked.

Research Area

  • Cultural History
  • History

Publications

Conferences

  • Modern British Studies (MBS) annual meeting: University of Birmingham (June 2026)
    • Paper: "In my case it would be so fatal": Race, nation, and pregnancy in two letters to Marie Stopes
  • Cambridge Cultural History Workshop: Gonville & Caius College (February 2026)
    • Paper: "In my case it would be so fatal": Pregnancy and Zionism in a latter to Marie Stopes
  • North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) annual meeting: Montréal, Canada (November 2025)
    • Paper: 'The union of three': Marie Stopes, her correspondents, and sex during pregnancy
  • Second World War Research Group conference: 'The Second World War 80 Years On,' King's College London, London, UK (June 2025)
    • Paper: 'This world into which I had the temerity to bring a new soul': Toward a history of pregnancy during the Second World War
  • Social History Society annual conference, Durham University, Durham, UK (July 2024)
    • Paper: 'I am writing for advice about a very intimate matter: Constructing the pregnant self in letters to Marie Stopes'
    • Panel chair: Women's Work
  • International Association for Maternal Action and Scholarship (IAMAS) annual conference, Boston University, Boston, USA (June 2024)
    • Paper: 'The present flower of human development: Maternal age in Marie Stopes' Radiant Motherhood (1920)'
  • Maternal Bodies Symposium, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (June 2023)
    • Paper: 'White Femininity and the Ideal Pregnant Body in Marie Stopes' Radiant Motherhood (1921)' (unpublished)
    • Co-organiser, co-host, panel chair
    • M4C CDF event

Public Engagement & Impact

Other Research Interests

  • Sensory history
  • Emotional history
  • Literary history
  • Material culture
  • Food history
  • German studies

Memberships

  • Royal Historical Society (postgraduate member)
  • Maternal Bodies Network (founding member)
  • Culture and the Reproductive Body Network (steering committee member)
  • International Association for Maternal Action and Scholarship
  • Perceptions of Pregnancy Research Network
  • Women's History Network
  • Social History Society
  • Society for the Social History of Medicine

Teaching

  • The Making of the Modern World ca. 1500-1800
    • PGTA for first-year module
    • 2x seminar groups
    • Autumn term 2024