Description:

A panel of five feminist doctors, scholars, educators and activists discuss the politics of human biological reproduction as well as the reproduction of social inequity and gendered systems of power. Angela Lawson, a clinical and forensic psychologist working in Northwestern Medicine’s fertility clinic, will discuss the psychosocial consequences of infertility, reproductive losses, and our current culture, which simultaneously penalizes and coerces women into motherhood. Sekile Nzinga-Johnson, Ph.D. (Director of the Women’s Center, GSS) serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Abortion Fund, which supports the reproductive autonomy of communities here in Chicago; her reproductive justice scholarship is on Black women academics and mothering, as well as on reproductive activism in Chicago. Sloane Scott will explore reproduction from her vantage as a student activist and Co-President of Planned Parenthood Generation Action. Katie Watson (Northwestern Medicine, Medical Social Sciences, Medical Education, and Ob/Gyn) will examine the restrictive reproductive laws of the past and new legal barriers we may soon face through the prism of The Handmaid's Tale. Sera Young (Anthropology & Global Health, Institute for Policy Research) will focus on infant feeding in The Handmaid’s Tale as well as the power of breastfeeding on the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, and economic well-being of infants . . . and their mothers.

This Keyword Series is organized in collaboration with One Book One Northwestern, whose featured book in 2018-19 is Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

Click here for the poster.