Poised at the intersection of the sciences and humanities, Rebecca Flemming, professor of ancient history at the University of Cambridge, a cutting-edge theorist and historian of gender and social history with a specialty in ancient medicine, will give the fourth Cornell College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Lecture, "Fertility, Medicine and the Divine in the Classical World."

The talk, slated for Aug. 31 at 4:30 p.m. in Goldwin Smith Hall's Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, will be followed by a reception at the A.D. White House. Both events are free and open to the public.

The lecture draws on Flemming's work on reproduction and generation in the Western world, from antiquity to the present, from historical work on the social conception of fertility in antiquity to the social and medical innovations brought about by such modern technologies as in vitro fertilization treatments.

Flemming's research treats the relationship between historical scholarship and modern theory and investigation as a two-way process. In one groundbreaking study, she used contemporary work on prostitution in Nairobi to reconstruct the actual function of sex as an economic practice in Roman antiquity. In another paper, published in Economy and Society, she identified a trend in contemporary social attitudes toward suicide and euthanasia by reference to a similar phenomenon in the Roman Empire.

"Professor Flemming has an extraordinary intellectual vitality and reach," says Charles Brittain, chair of Cornell's Department of Classics.

More recently, Flemming's work has focused on the social implications of the practices, institutions and epistemologies of medicine in the Roman Empire. She is the author of "Medicine and the Making of Roman Women: Gender, Nature, and Authority from Celsus to Galen," in which she surveyed the entire range of ancient medical thought in the period to locate the "apparatus" of gender in the conceptualization of the female body and mind. Brittain calls her book "a tour de force of accessible and feminist-informed historical scholarship."

Flemming, who received her Ph.D. in ancient history from the University of London, is the recipient of numerous honors, including a fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, the Philip Leverhulme Prize and the Norman H. Baynes Prize from the University of London.

The Arts and Sciences Humanities Lectures are presented with support from the Office of the President and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Linda Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.