Our department is excited to welcome Tara Mulder (Brown University, PhD’15), who joined our department in fall 2024 as an Assistant Professor. Learn more about her in the Q&A below.
1. What is your main area of research, and how did you get into that area of focus?
In my work, I draw from modern feminist theory to examine the history of reproduction in the ancient world. The book I am currently writing, A Womb of One’s Own: Childbirth in Ancient Rome tells an ancient Roman birth story through an amalgamation of episodes, anecdotes, and fragments from lots of different people. To do this work, I have had to get comfortable working with many genres and materials: medical and philosophical texts, historical and literary texts, personal letters, contracts, inscriptions, materials objects such as votives, amulets, medical instruments, coins, and reliefs, legal texts, and bioarcheological evidence. It’s a challenge to write meaningfully and authentically about people in the ancient world who don’t leave much of a record, but a challenge I really enjoy. I’m also interested in the way that the ancient world resonates in the modern world and how to communicate these resonances to a wide audience. I’ve written about the use of ancient history in Roe v. Wade and about ancient and modern stories about trans bodies and sexuality, among other things.
The origins of my research interests go back quite a way. My mother is a homebirth midwife and I grew up attending and assisting at births. I’ve always been interested in the social and political landscape of birth, especially the conflict between feminists who promote home birth and feminist who promote hospital birth. Then, in my second year of graduate school, in a seminar on the Second Sophistic, I learned about Soranus’ Gynecology, a second century text dealing with midwifery, childbirth, and breastfeeding. I realized I could join my ancient world studies with my lifelong interest in birth. In addition to A Womb of One’s Own, I’m working on a translation of Metrodora’s On the Conditions of the Womb, a Byzantine medical text written by a woman. I’m also the editor of the forthcoming A Cultural History of Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Ancient World for Bloomsbury. In the future I’d like to write a public-facing book about abortion in antiquity and today.
2. What is your favorite thing about the CANES department, UW, and/or Madison so far?
I’m impressed with the range and intensity of intellectual passions in the CANES department. I look forward to working with the CANES graduate students and collaborating on research and teaching projects with the faculty. I’m particularly excited to be starting along with Julia Horn, whose work in ancient medicine complements my own. As far as Madison is concerned, I’m excited about all the greenery and bike paths. I look forward to biking to campus and hopefully getting a spot in one of the community gardens.
3. What are your passions, hobbies, and interests outside of academia?
When I was in graduate school I trained as an herbalist and later I ran an Etsy shop for five years selling body balms and oils. All the proceeds went to Grace Community Birth Center in Grand-Bassin, Haiti, a project started by my friend and Haitian native, Ninotte Lubin. We met when my mom and I traveled to Haiti to provide midwifery care after the 2010 earthquake. The Etsy shop has been on hold while I’ve been taking care of my child, who was born in 2023, but I’m hoping to get it up and running again soon. I also enjoy biking, yoga, vegetable and herb gardening, wildcrafting, mushrooming, tumbling Petoskey stones from Lake Michigan, and knitting. And I have an old lady black cat named Maebe.