CFP for Reproductive Justice and Literature Handbook

We seek contributing authors for a handbook on Reproductive Justice and Literature to be edited by Laura Lazzari and Beth Widmaier Capo and published by Palgrave Macmillan.

This handbook will include essays of 8,000-10,000 words each that analyze reproductive justice issues as they play out across and through literature. Essays may consider any period, genre, or cultural context in literature, but must situate the works in a reproductive justice framework (delineated by Ross and Solinger in Reproductive Justice: An Introduction 2017: an intersectional analysis of the right to have a child, not have a child, and parent in a safe/healthy environment). An essay may use the framework of reproductive justice to focus on topics of reproductive control and fertility, prenatal and maternal healthcare, sterilization and reproductive technologies, childbirth and maternal mortality, motherhood and parenting, adoption, surrogacy, and childcare in one or more texts. Attention should be given to issues of intersectionality and power, such as how race, class, and sexuality compound women’s relationship to reproduction. If you would like more background on reproductive justice, we also recommend Loretta Ross’s “Understanding Reproductive Justice: Transforming the Pro-Choice Movement” (Off Our Backs, vol. 36, no. 4, 2006, pp. 14–19). This handbook is the first to analyze literature through the lens of reproductive justice, the social movement begun by U.S. women of color activists, rather than traditional reproductive politics.

This text is meant to be a resource to scholars, teachers, and students in a wide range of fields, including literature and social justice, literature and reproduction, cultural studies, women’s and gender studies, literature and law, reproductive rights and gender justice, literature and gender, literature and human rights, and motherhood studies.

Please send a 500 word abstract, 3-5 keywords, and a short biography by March 15, 2021 to bcapo@ic.edu. Completed drafts are due by July 1, 2021.