POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION: SEX, ABORTION, AND MOTHERHOOD

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Upper-Level

Cultural ideas about reproduction shape how we experience and understand gender and sexuality and ideas about gender and sexuality influence how we view reproduction. As such, we cannot challenge dominant ideas about gender and sexuality without critical conversations about reproductive issues. Because requirements for being considered a “good” woman are so closely connected to what it means to be a “good” mother, any analysis of gender requires critical engagement with ideas about reproduction—even for those of us who plan to avoid parenthood or do not have heterosexual sex. This class focuses on the politics of reproduction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the social and political relations that shape reproductive issues today. We will assess the ways that different women experience reproduction differently, considering throughout how the construction of gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and geography inform understandings and experiences of reproduction. Throughout the course, we will take on the paradoxes, horrors, complexities, and joys of reproduction. Cross-list: ENGL 378 .