CALL FOR PAPERS: The History and Politics of Abortion (paper collection)

CFP: The History and Politics of Abortion

An edited collection by Tracy Penny Light and Shannon Stettner

Women’s bodies have always been sites of struggle – over meanings and for control.  The most polarizing conflicts involve women’s reproductive autonomy.  Around the world women continue to fight for or to retain hard won abortion rights.  Women’s experiences with abortion are contested by and between the medical establishment, the state, churches, the media, and activists.  Further complicating these conflicts are issues of race, class, gender, and heteronormativity.  This collection seeks to publish works on the history and politics of abortion worldwide.  We invite theoretical, country-specific, and transnational comparative pieces.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

-Shifting (historical/political) meanings of abortion
-The place of women in abortion politics/history
-Historical constructions of the fetus
-“Pro-choice” and “pro-life” activism
-Reproductive justice movement
-The role of the state in abortion politics
- The role of the medical profession in abortion politics
-The influence of medical advancements on abortion politics/history
-Abortion and sexuality

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and a one-page CV to Tracy Penny Light. Article abstracts due November 30, 2012.

Tracy Penny Light is Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Waterloo and Associate Professor in the Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Studies and History departments at St. Jerome’s University (University of Waterloo).  Her research explores the medical discourse on gender and sexuality in Canada and the United States in the twentieth century.  Her forthcoming book, Shifting Interests: The Medical Discourse on Abortion in English Canada, 1850-1969 (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) explores the ways that the medical profession has understood abortion practices in the past.  She has published articles on masculinity and the feminine ideal in Canada and the United States as well as on developing historical thinking in students.  She is also co-editing two forthcoming books: Bodily Subjects: Essays on Gender and Health, 1800-2000 (with Wendy Mitchinson and Barbara Brookes) and a book on feminist pedagogy in higher education (with Jane Nicholas and Renee Bondy).

Shannon Stettner recently defended her dissertation, Women and Abortion in English Canada: Public Debates and Political Participation, 1959-1970, at York University and is under contract to revise the manuscript for publication (Wilfrid Laurier University Press). The book explores women’s contributions to the abortion law reform debate of the decade.  She has published in the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History and is currently editing a volume of abortion narratives and think pieces entitled Voices on Choice(s): Reflections on Abortion in Canada.

(source: Legal History Blog)