Radicalizing Reproduction

Reproduction is increasingly the locus of political panic, from attacks on abortion rights to ethical debates about new reproductive technologies. But moral panics about reproduction are nothing new. The reproduction of bodies and labor has been regulated and surveilled in the service of a variety of projects in a variety of historical contexts–tied to nationalism, capitalism, racial domination, class, gender, and sexual regulation. How can feminist scholarship, art, and activism clarify the forms reproductive governance can take, while pushing us to imagine more radical forms of reproductive care? 

Panelists:

• Amrita Pande, Professor Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town

  Amrita Pande is Professor and Head of Department of Sociology at University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research lies at the intersection of gender, globalization and the intimate, with a focus on transnational reproduction, repro-genetic technologies, and multimodal ethnography. Her work has appeared in many journals including Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Gender and Society, Journal of Gender Studies, Medical Anthropology, Critical Social Policy, International Migration Review, Qualitative Sociology, Feminist Studies, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Anthropologica, PhiloSOPHIA, Reproductive BioMedicine and in numerous edited volumes. Her most recent books include Epistemic Justice and the Postcolonial University (With Chaturvedi and Daya, Wits and NYU Press, 2023), Birth Controlled: Selective Reproduction and Neo Eugenics in India and South Africa (Manchester Univ Press, 2022), and Scripting defiance: Four Sociological Vignettes (With Ari Sitas, Sumangala Damodaran, Wiebke Keim, and Nicos Trimikliniotis, Tulika Books and Columbia University Press, 2022). Her award-winning book Wombs in Labor: Transnational Surrogacy in India (Columbia University Press 2014) has recently been released in India (Primus Press). Over the past two decades she has conducted multi-sited research on fertility clinics, traveling egg provision and cross-border surrogacy in India, Cambodia, Ghana and South Africa. She has written for national newspapers across the world and has appeared in Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed on the BBC, Sarah Carey’s Newstalk on Irish radio, DR2 Deadline on Danish National television, TRT world, Turkey, and on SABC2 and SAfM, South Africa to discuss her work on the fertility industry. She is also an educator- performer touring the world with a performance lecture series, Made in India: Notes from a Baby farm (co-produced by Riksteatern, Sweden and Global Studies Production, Denmark) based on her ethnographic work on surrogacy. Made in India premiered at Södra Teatern, Sweden and has toured over 20 cities since 2012. In 2022 Amrita started the Women Walk at Midnight (WWM) movement in South Africa. As the founder of the WWM movement in South Africa, she will be addressing the 23rd International Walk21 Conference, in Kigali, Rwanda in Oct 2023.

• Mai’a Williams, Co-Executive Director of SPIRAL

  Mai’a Williams is a writer and artist, living in Minnesota. It was their living and working with Egyptian, Palestinian, Congolese, and Central American indigenous mothers in resistance communities that inspired their life-giving work and art-making practices.  They are the co-Executive Director of SPIRAL Collective, a reproductive justice organization based in the Twin Cities. They are also the co-editor of the anthology, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and the author of the memoirs, This is How We Survive: Revolutionary Mothering, War, and Exile in the 21st Century, The Future of Love, and Apocalypse Here. 

• Siri Suh, Associate Professor of Sociology, Brandeis University

  Siri Suh is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University with research interests in global maternal and reproductive health, population and development, and feminist and postcolonial studies of science, medicine, and technology. Her research has been funded by the American Association of University Women, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Suh has conducted research on maternal and reproductive health with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Guttmacher Institute, Global Doctors for Choice, and Management Sciences for Health (MSH). Her book, Dying to Count: Post-Abortion Care and Global Reproductive Health Politics in Senegal (Rutgers University Press, 2021), received the 2022 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize for scholarship in gender and health from the American Anthropological Association.  Suh’s current project explores how misoprostol, a uterotonic medication, is transforming the technological, clinical, professional, and political landscape of reproduction in West Africa.  Conducted in collaboration with social scientists from national universities in Burkina Faso and Senegal, this ethnographic project has received nearly a million dollars in funding from the Hewlett Foundation's Gender Equity and Governance Program.  Titled “Into Women’s Hands/Entre les Mains des Femmes,” the project investigates the availability, distribution, procurement, and use of misoprostol by consumers, health workers, public health authorities, pharmaceutical vendors, aid donors, and national and international NGOs in Burkina Faso and Senegal. As part of their research methodology, Suh and her colleagues actively train and mentor graduate students at Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso) and Université Cheikh Anta Diop (Senegal) in data collection and analysis and project management.  Suh holds a PhD in Sociomedical Sciences and a Master of Public Health from Columbia University. 

• Vanessa Ly, Founder/Executive Director, Sisters Unchained

  Vanessa Ly is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Sisters Unchained, a Boston-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting young women and girls impacted by parental incarceration. Established in 2015 (with 501c3 status in 2020) Sisters Unchained provides a refuge space where impacted young women and girls - ~98% of whom are of color – can focus on loving and improving themselves and their communities in the way they see fit. Vanessa immigrated to Boston from Peru in 1982 at the age of four and from a young age issues impacting women of color have been particularly important to her. Vanessa is intentional and passionate about creating safe spaces that facilitate healing, personal growth, and leadership development for Sisters Unchained participants. 

  In addition to holding a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and an Associate’s degree in Biotechnology: Forensic DNA Science from Massachusetts Bay Community College, Vanessa also completed a 200 Yoga Teacher Training, holds an End of Life Doula Certificate, and is a self-taught documentary filmmaker. Her first short film, “Eternally Misunderstood,” shares the stories of nine young women with incarcerated loved ones. The film has been screened at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston College, and Harvard University. Vanessa and Sisters Unchained are founding partners of the Anti-Carceral Co-Lab at Wellesley College, a regional hub that centers the experiences of women, girls, and families impacted by incarceration. Through this partnership Vanessa participated in the Artist Interview series of the Prison Nation Exhibition at Wellesley’s Davis Museum. Vanessa is also a partner with Community Movement Commons in Roxbury, who brings together organizers, community members, midwives, and healers to dismantle oppression and give girls to a radically reimagined future. 

  In every creative endeavor, Vanessa aims to embody the language closest to her heart: storytelling, which she sees as a medium of self-healing.