[ecrea] CFP - Representing Abortion

*Call for papers: /Representing Abortion/*

*Edited by Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst*

*Deadline for proposals: October 1, 2018*

*Email: (rahurst /at/ stfx.ca) <mailto:(rahurst /at/ stfx.ca)>*

Rosalind Pollack Petchesky argued in 1987 that “feminists and other 
prochoice advocates have all too readily ceded the visual terrain,” 
abandoning the field of fetal imagery to antiabortion activists 
(264).She called for new fetal images that “recontextualized the fetus” 
(Petchesky 1987, 287).Such images would locate the fetus in a body (and 
a social context) outside of what Carol A. Stabile would later describe 
as “an inhospitable waste land, at war with the ‘innocent person’ 
within” that is a dominant theme in antiabortion discourse (1992, 
179).Recently, Shannon Stettner wrote that although there are more 
ordinary stories about abortion circulating as a political response to 
threats to abortion access, they are typically anonymous and online, and 
so it remains a reality that “we are still a long way from a world in 
which women will not feel obliged to conceal the fact that they had an 
abortion” (2016, 7).Even in circumstances that support access to 
abortion, abortion can remain a secret: invisible and unheard.

How do we represent abortion?What work does representing abortion do?Can 
representing abortion challenge and change conventional reproductive 
rights understandings of abortion that circulate publicly?Will 
reclaiming representations of abortion help publicly express the “things 
we cannot say” about abortion from a pro-choice perspective, like grief 
and multiple abortions (Ludlow 2008, p. 29)?Alternatively, does taking 
back control of representing abortion from antiabortion activists 
provide a space to “celebrate” abortion as a central component of 
reproductive justice (Thomsen 2013, 149)?This edited collection begins 
from these questions to consider how artists, writers, performers, and 
activists create space to make abortion visible, audible, and palpable 
within contexts dominated by antiabortion imagery centred on the fetus 
and the erasure of the person considering or undergoing abortion.This 
collection will build on the recent exciting proliferation of scholarly 
work on abortion that investigates the history, politics, and law of 
abortion, as well as antiabortion movements and experiences of pregnancy 
loss (Haugeberg 2017; Johnstone 2017; Lind & Deveau 2017; Sanger 2017; 
Saurette & Gordon 2016; Smyth 2016; Stettner 2016; Stettner, Burnett, & 
Hay 2017; Watson 2018).Central to the considerations in this proposed 
collection is the intellectual and political work that these artworks, 
texts, performances, and actions do and make possible.Contemporary and 
historical analyses are welcomed.

Some possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  * “ordinary” stories about abortion told through a variety of media
    (e.g. “The Abortion Diaries Podcast” by Melissa Madera; various
    blogs and websites like “My Abortion. My Life”)
  * abortion memoirs (e.g. Marianne Apostolides’ /Deep Salt Water/;
    Kassi Underwood’s /May Cause Love: An Unexpected Journey of
    Enlightenment After Abortion/)
  * visual art (e.g. Laia Abril’s /On Abortion/; Paula Rego’s /The
    Abortion Pastels/)
  * making the abortion procedure visible, audible, and palpable in
    abortion support services (e.g. offering the option to view products
    of conception; abortion support zines)
  * activist art and performance (e.g. the Abortion Caravan in Canada;
    Chi Nguyen’s “5.4 MILLION AND COUNTING” quilt in Texas; Maria
    Campbell’s mixed media art on Prince Edward Island; Heather Ault’s
    travelling graphic art exhibit /4000 Years for Choice/;
    #RepealThe8th protest art in Ireland)
  * plays (e.g. Julia Samuels’ /I Told My Mum I Was Going On An RE
    Trip/; Jane Martin’s /Keely and Du/)
  * films (e.g. Poppy Liu’s /Names of Women/; Tracy Droz Tragos’
    /Abortion: Stories Women Tell/)

    To submit a proposal for inclusion in this collection, please submit
    a 500 word abstract, a working title, and a 100 word biographical
    statement to (rahurst /at/ stfx.ca) <mailto:(rahurst /at/ stfx.ca)>.Proposals must
    be received on or before _October 1, 2018._Full papers will be
    invited no later than November 1, 2018, and the abstracts will be
    used to prepare a book proposal to be submitted to refereed academic
    publishers.Complete manuscripts will be due on June 1, 2019, so they
    can be revised by October 1, 2019 to submit to the publisher.





    _References_

    Haugeberg, Karissa. 2017. /Women Against Abortion: Inside the
    Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century. /Indiana:
    University of Illinois Press.

    Johnstone, Rachael. 2017. /After Morgentaler: The Politics of
    Abortion in Canada/. Vancouver: UBC Press.

    Lind, Emily R. M. and Angie Deveau, Editors. 2017. /Interrogating
    Pregnancy Loss: Feminist Writings on Abortion, Miscarriage and
    Stillbirth/. Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.

    Ludlow, Jeannie. 2008. “The Things We Cannot Say: Witnessing the
    Trauma-tization of Abortion in the United States.” /WSQ: Women’s
    Studies Quarterly/36(1/2): 28-41.

    Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack. 1987. “Fetal Images: The Power of
    Visual Culture in the Politics of Abortion,” /Feminist Studies
    /13(2): 263-292.

    Sanger, Carol. 2017. /About Abortion: Terminating Pregnancy in
    Twenty-First Century America./Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Saurette, Paul and Kelly Gordon. 2016. /The Changing Voice of the
    Anti-Abortion Movement: The Rise of "Pro-Woman" Rhetoric in Canada
    and the United States/. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Smyth, Lisa. 2016. /Abortion and Nation: The Politics of
    Reproduction in Contemporary Ireland. /London: Routledge.

    Stabile, Carol A. 1992. “Shooting the Mother: Fetal Photography and
    the Politics of Disappearance,” /Camera Obscura /10(1): 178-205.

    Stettner, Shannon, Kristin Burnett, and Travis Hay. 2017. /Abortion:
    History, Politics, and Reproductive Justice after Morgentaler/.
    Vancouver: UBC Press.

    Stettner, Shannon. 2016. “Without Apology: An Introduction.” In
    /Without Apology: Writings on Abortion in Canada./Edited by Shannon
    Stettner. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.

    Thomsen, Carly. 2013. “From Refusing Stigmatization toward
    Celebration: New Directions for Reproductive Justice Activism,”
    /Feminist Studies/39(1): 149-158.

    Watson, Katie. 2018. /Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law, and Politcs of
    Ordinary Abortion/. Oxford: Oxford University Press.





    About the Editor: Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst is Associate Professor
    of Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in
    Antigonish, Nova Scotia.She is author of /Surface Imaginations:
    Cosmetic Surgery, Photography, and Skin/(MQUP, 2015), and a
    co-editor of /Skin, Culture, and Psychoanalysis/(Palgrave, 2013).Her
    research is concerned with the relationships between power,
    embodiment, and (visual) culture, from the perspectives of
    psychoanalysis and decolonial thought.

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