Description: This international conference invites scholars to explore how reproductive justice has been represented in literature, film, television, visual media, and other cultural texts across different historical periods. Grounded in Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger’s definition of reproductive justice – which encompasses the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent in safe and supportive environments – this conference seeks to examine the ways in which cultural narratives have shaped, contested, and reimagined reproductive rights.
We welcome contributions that engage with diverse depictions of reproductive experiences, including pregnancy, abortion, (non)motherhood, reproductive technologies, parenting, and gender roles. We especially encourage intersectional approaches that highlight how reproductive justice is shaped by race, age, class, sexuality, disability, migration, and nationhood. Additionally, we are interested in how cultural texts respond to legal, medical, and political frameworks of reproductive justice, from historical struggles to contemporary and speculative futures.
Submission guidelines:
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Representations of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum experiences
- Queer and trans perspectives on reproductive justice
- Surrogacy, adoption, and kinship networks
- Reproductive coercion and reproduction resistance
- Narratives of abortion, contraception, and reproductive autonomy
- (Non)Motherhood and regretting motherhood
- Reproductive labor and care work in literature and media
- Reproductive technologies and bioethics in speculative fiction
- Eugenics, sterilization, and reproductive oppression
- Racialized and class-based reproductive policies
Please submit an abstract (200–300 words) for a 20-minute presentation to the organizers (In********@ph******.de and Is***********@fa*.de)
Submission deadlines: May 15th, 2025.
