Description:

Please join the Colloquium on Ethnicty and Diaspora (CED) for a virtual lecture featuring Dr. Jennifer C. Nash, the Jan Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She will be presenting "In the Room," a talk based on her latest monograph Birthing Black Mothers (Duke University Press, 2021). 

"In the Room" explores the work of women of color doulas laboring in Chicago in an era where doulas are increasingly hailed -by the state and by activists- as precisely the innovation that can save black mother's lives. Professor Nash's analysis draws on twenty-three interviews she conducted in 2018 with birth doulas-many of whom describe themselves as "bodyguards" -- working in the Chicago metropolitan area. She explores the complicated tensions around professionalization and the medicalization of birth that underpins their practice, and considers the place of their work in the ongoing effort to eradicate black infant and maternal mortality.

Nash's lecture is the second installment of this year's CED speaker series, Care: As Keyword and Praxis. As we continue to live amid the crises of global health and climate, as well as blatant and systemic inequality, CED's continued focus on Care allows us to interrogate and respond to the pressing conditions impacting the nation, our own campus communities, and the greater Chicago area. 

Co-sponsored by: Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities| African American Studies | American Studies |Anthropology | English | Center for African American History | Critical Theory Cluster| History | Philosophy | The Sexualities Project at Northwestern | Latino and Latina Studies Program | Department of Spanish and Portuguese