Current Call For Papers

Call for Papers: Justice, Rights and the Futures of Reproduction

Feminist Anthropology Spring 2024

 

“Reproductive justice provokes and interrupts the status quo and imagines better futures through radical forms of resistance and critique” (Ross: 292, 2017)

 

The overturning of Roe v. Wade marks a monumental event in the US that has rippled across issues and geography. Feminist Anthropology invites scholars working from a feminist ethnographic, somatic, sonic, linguistic, or material perspective to submit original articles that interrogate the local and global impacts of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We invite articles engaged with these issues from not only North America but also Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean region, Asia, Europe, and beyond.

 

Articles may be traditional evidence-based research articles or essays that explore a particular issue in feminist research, theory, or praxis. They do not necessarily need to rely on conventional anthropological research; for example, feminist poems, creative non-fiction or fiction, visual art, or contributions to the praxis of feminist teaching and mentoring are also welcome (see the journal’s author guidelines for submission specifications).

 

The editors have a particular interest in submissions that take up the three interconnected principles of reproductive justice:

• the right to have children under conditions of one’s choice,

• the right to not have children using methods of one’s choosing, and

• the right to parent children in a safe and healthy environment free from individual or state-sponsored violence (Ross, 2017; Ross et al., 2016).

 

In addition, we seek analyses that queer the inequitable reproductive roles and processes imposed on birthing persons by regimes and inherited epistemologies. We also encourage submissions addressing the futures of reproduction amidst political regimes that impact birthing bodies and technology-assisted reproduction. Across all of these suggestions, the editors actively seek submitted work that particularly addresses some aspects of race, ethnicity, caste, class, religion, geography, residence, environment, gender and sexuality, and/or immigration status.

 

This special issue will focus on three perspectives shaping our reproductive futures: embodiment, emplacement, and epistemologies. Submissions should address or expand an aspect of the following suggested questions or explore embodiment, emplacement, and epistemologies in reproductive justice, rights, or the futures of reproduction.

 

Embodiment

• How does the embodiment of birthing shape the possibilities for reproductive justice?

• How do current political climates queer reproduction? Conversely, how might current political climates normalize or seek to erase queer reproduction?

• What are the potential impacts of growing reproduction restrictions on assisted reproductive technologies and their globalization? What are the related impacts on technology-assisted reproduction?  

• How might technology be used for greater surveillance and criminalization of those who pursue non-reproduction?

• What are the potential stigmas and impacts of medical denial on the populations that choose abortion to resolve medical crises? What are the ways by which medical professionals may shame and traumatize those that choose to terminate a pregnancy?

• What are the societal impacts of state-mandated pregnancies?

• How might these restrictions influence decisions around family-making (or not?) In other words what might non-reproduction (birth strike, antinatalism, etc)  tell us about reproductive injustice?

 

Emplacement

• What are the intersections between environmental justice, food justice, food sovereignty movements, racism, and reproduction? How might we make sense of what results at those crossroads in a “post-Roe” world?

• How do indigenous land rights and healthcare regimes intersect with reproductive politics? Has this legal decision shifted or highlighted an element of this intersection?

• How do growing constraints on reproduction impact incarcerated, detained, or otherwise state-manipulated populations?

• How might reproduction restrictions impact current or emerging national or transnational migration flows?

 

Epistemologies

• If belief is an ethical process shaped by one’s own experiences (epistemic virtue), how are prevailing state policies impacting birthing persons constituted and sustained? How has this shifted across time (temporally) and/or geography? What additional shifts are likely invoked by dismantling Roe v. Wade?.

• How are social identities and reproductive justice framed in debates around reproductive rights and futures globally, and in the US? How has this shifted across time (temporally) and/or geography? What additional shifts are likely invoked by dismantling Roe v. Wade?.

• How might foregrounding feminist epistemologies challenge socio-legal frameworks at play in new abortion restrictions?

• What is the nexus between growing autocratic, populist, and religious national leadership and restrictive reproduction policies?

 

Editors will work with authors to determine whether successful submissions will be published in Feminist Anthropology’s online platform, the print journal, or both venues.

 

Upload submissions via the journal’s Scholar One portal by May 30, 2023. Please address questions and inquiries to the journal’s co-editors at feminist.anthropology.journal[AT]gmail.com.

 

References

Roberts, Dorothy. E. (1997). Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Vintage Books.

Ross, Loretta, Gutiérrez, Elena, Gerber, Marlene, & Silliman, Jael. (2016). Undivided Rights: Women of color organizing for reproductive justice. Haymarket Books.

Ross, Loretta, & Solinger, Rickie. (2017). Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. University of California Press.