Center for Scholars and Writers
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum, Room 227
Humanities and Social Sciences Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York, New York 10018

Claudine Cohen

THE DAWN OF WOMANKIND : PREHISTORIC WOMEN IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Wednesday, April 3 at 6 p.m.

For a long time, prehistoric archaeology and palaeoanthropology have mainly described "prehistoric Man", stressing the "virile" aspect of his activities and his conquests. "Man the hunter", "Man the toolmaker", "Man the artist", such were the paradigms of prehistoric humanity which were then constructed. In the course of the 20th century, an important trend of research, mainly influenced by Anglo-American feminism, sought to refute these androcentric representations and to put an end to the "archaeological inexistence" of women. What evidence and arguments have been brought forward in order to locate women in prehistoric societies? What are the debates and controversies which have been carried on regarding these topics? And what does this history reveal about the place of women and its representation in our societies?

Claudine Cohen teaches the history of science at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, where she is also the co-director of the research program “Biology and Society”. Her areas of research include the history of paleontology, prehistoric archaeology and evolutionary biology. A fellow of the New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers, she has been working this year on La Femme des Origines, Images de la Femme préhistorique, to be published next fall at Editions Herscher, Paris. She is also currently preparing the first English translation and edition of Leibniz’s Protogaea (with A. Wakefield, The University of Chicago Press). She is the author of several books, including l'Homme des Origines, Savoirs et Fictions en préhistoire (Paris, Seuil, 1999) and Le Destin du Mammouth, (Paris, Seuil, 1994) now translated as The Fate of the Mammoth: Fossils, Myth and History (The University of Chicago Press, April 2002).

The Margaret Liebman Berger Forum is located on the second floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. This is a free public program. Seating is limited. To register, please call 212-930-0084 or send an email to CSW@nypl.org.

The Center for Scholars and Writers sponsors a competitive fellowship program open to scholars, non-academic research professionals, scientists engaged in the humanities, and creative writers of demonstrated achievement whose proposed work will benefit directly from access to the Library's collections.

Made possible by a generous endowment by Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, Sue Ann and John Weinberg, The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, William W. Karatz, and additional gifts from Mel and Lois Tukman and Sandra Payson.