GWSS 299 A: Women Studies Colloquium

Course Information

GWSS 299: Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Colloquium | Winter 2023

W 1:30-3:20 | Architecture Hall 160
C/NC, 2 credits

Instructors

Chandan Reddy (he/him)
Office Hours:

Sasha Su-Ling Welland (she/her)
Office Hours: Padelford Hall B-110L, Thursdays 11:30-12:30

Colloquium on Reproductive Justice: Critical Perspectives

Course Description

This topical colloquium series presents a survey of ongoing reproductive justice efforts and debates, engaging field-practitioners, activists, and scholars. Guest speakers involved in the current on-the-ground response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade will provide a range of perspectives on the topic, including historical legacies of past reproductive justice movements, as intertwined with those of the present, and analyses of contemporary local and global politics. 

The colloquium will introduce students to the concept of “reproductive justice” as a crucial feminist framework for understanding the larger stakes and scope of social and political efforts to secure access to abortion services for pregnant people. Situating the loss of federally protected abortion services for pregnant people within a reproductive justice framework highlights the interconnectedness of gender, sexuality, race and class. Invited guests will help us interrogate the frameworks often used in media and society to discuss abortion and help us see whose lives and histories are excluded by such frameworks. They will discuss the effects these exclusions have on current efforts to resecure universal access to abortion services and and help us conceptualize reproductive justice efforts that refuse such exclusions.

Required Materials

All required readings, podcasts, and videos will be posted on the Canvas website, organized by weekly Modules.

Requirements/Assignments

Participation

This colloquium is designed to give you a space to think about the context of a post-Roe U.S. society and the implications of this context for women’s lives, pregnant people’s health, feminist social movements, and other efforts for social change and the creation of equitable life chances at both local and global scales. To do this, you need to attend all sessions and come prepared to share your thinking, questions, hopes, worries, confusions, desires, and excitement with your peers. Each week we will break you out into discussion groups with your peers (as small as two or as large as five or six). You will share your thoughts about the week’s readings or the week’s invited guest speaker’s presentation with your peers in these break-out groups; and, you will be asked to listen as best as possible and support your peers as they share their perspectives. It is essential you come to each session ready to engage your peers.

Reading Responses                            

You will be responsible for turning in reading responses every other week. These responses should show that you read the materials for the week you are assigned by briefly sharing what stood out to you about the reading(s), or surprised you, or left your questioning. You can also focus your response on whether you agree with the reading or not and what challenges you might want to pose to the argument in the reading. Each response must be between 250-500 words, and they are due on Wednesday at 1pm for the week you are assigned a response. You will type in or upload your assigned reading response to Canvas using the “Assignments” tab. 

Class Reflection Journal                                                        

You will turn in journal entries on the alternating weeks that you are not writing a Reading Response. Content-wise, these journal entries are open-ended and meant to be a space for you to reflect on the week’s colloquium for which you are writing the entry. You can discuss your thoughts about conversations in your breakout group. You can discuss your thoughts about the invited speaker that week. Or you can discuss questions and concerns that you are left with after the week's colloquium. These journal entries will also be limited to 250-500 words. And, they will be due by Friday at noon of the week you are assigned a class reflection.

End of Colloquium Reflection

Everyone will turn in one final journey entry the last week of the quarter, by Friday, 3/10/23, at 12pm. This entry will be a space for you to share what you learned from being in the colloquium, or what stood out to you, or what you would like to do next with the perspectives and frameworks you gained from the colloquium. Like the class reflection entries, this is an open-ended space for you to share your thoughts. There are no wrong answers. We want you to have the entry as a space for your to reflect on the quarter-long colloquium and what you take away from it and your conversations with your peers.  

Evaluation

This course is Credit/No Credit. To receive credit for the course you will need to get the equivalent of a “D” or 60% of all available points.

Your final grades will be calculated on the following basis:

Schedule (subject to change or addition)

• 1/4: Welcome. Introduction. Overview of Colloquium. Discussion of Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization
  
  
• 1/11: Defining “Reproductive Justice”
  Required Reading: Angela Davis, “Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights”; “Introduction” to Radical Reproductive Justice by Loretta Ross, et al.
  
  
• 1/18: Global Pre-Histories of Reproductive Justice
  Guest Speaker: Dr. Lynn Thomas, UW History
  Required Reading: Michelle Murphy, “Traveling Technology and the Device for Not Performing Abortions”; “Assessment of MVA…” East African Medical Journal
  
  
• 1/25: Racial Capitalism and Reproductive Justice
  Guest Speaker: Dr. Alys Weinbaum, UW English
  Required Reading: Alys Weinbaum, “Reproducing Racial Capitalism.” Special Issue on “Racist Logic: Markets, Drugs, Sex.” Boston Review Forum 44.2 (2019): 85-96.
  Recommended Reading: Alys Weinbaum, "Slave Episteme in Biocapitalism," Catalyst: Feminist, Theory, Technoscience 8.1 (2022). 
  
  
• 2/1: Nationalism, Population Management, and Reproductive Justice
  Guest Speaker: Dr. Mytheli Sreenivas, Ohio State University, History
  Required Reading: Mytheli Sreenivas, “Introduction,” to Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India
  
  
• 2/8: Law, Social Movements, and Reproductive Justice Today
  Guest Speaker: Dean Spade, Professor of Law, Seattle University
  Required Readings/Podcasts: Final Straw Radio with Jonathan VanNess, ““The Battle for Abortion and Reproductive Autonomy with Bay Ostrach,” January 10, 2022; Elise Hendrick, “Some thoughts about how the struggle for abortion rights and bodily autonomy should be waged (and can be won),” Patreon, July 3, 2022; Noah Zazanis, “On Our Own Terms: Class Struggle for Abortion and Transition,” Spectre Journal, July 1, 2022; CrimethInc., “To Defend Abortion Access, Take the Offensive,” June 27, 2022.
  
  
• 2/15: The Impact of Abortion Regulation and COVID on Reproductive Healthcare
  Guest Speaker: Dr. Michelle McGowan, Senior Associate Consultant, Mayo Clinic (& UW GWSS PhD)
  Required Reading: Gyuras et al, "Abortion and the Politics of Care in Ohio during the COVID Pandemic," in Ohio under COVID: Lessons from America's Heartland in Crisis (forthcoming) 
  
  
• 2/22: Anti-Racism Praxis and Reproductive Justice 
  Guest Speaker: Dr. Monica McLemore, UW School of Nursing
  Required Reading: TBA
  
  
• 3/1: Reproductive Justice in a Transnational Perspective
  Guest Speaker: Dr. Cristina Burneo Salazar, Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador
  Required Reading: TBA
  
  
• 3/8: Final Discussion/Wrap-up