Cultural Biography of the Prostate

Speaker: Professor Ericka Johnson, Linköping University, Sweden

We are all suffering an acute case of prostrate angst. Men worry about their own prostates and those of others close to them; women worry about the prostates of the men they love. The prostate—a gland located directly under the bladder—lurks on the periphery of many men’s health issues, but as an object of anxiety it goes beyond the medical, affecting how we understand masculinity, ageing, and sexuality. In this presentation and her book, A Cultural Biography of the Prostate, Ericka Johnson discusses what we think the prostate is and what we use the prostate to think about, examining it in historical, cultural, social, and medical contexts.