Reproductive Justice

programs supported by the center for the humanities

Rally for Planned Parenthood, New York City, February 26, 2011. Photo by Charlotte Cooper, CC BY 2.0 DEED.

The Center for the Humanities currently sponsors two initiatives to engage with research and pedagogical practice around the topic of reproductive justice: a faculty working group, Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights, and a year-long interdisciplinary StudioLab course, The Politics of Reproduction.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision that immediately led to the criminalization of abortion in several U.S. states, starting with Missouri, these initiatives are meant to empower interdisciplinary inquiry to address, discuss and communicate on political, racialized, gendered and public discourse around reproductive justice and its attendant themes of intimate practices and norms surrounding bodily autonomy and sexual practice.

Both of these projects share the axiom that humanistic knowledge across fields — Black studies, women’s and gender studies, queer studies, ethnic studies, history, sociology, anthropology, literature — can help us to understand and respond to seismic legal shifts such as the Dobbs decision. In both of these projects, both global networks and transnational knowledge will be engaged and considered as means of facilitating local progress toward reproductive justice. Both initiatives engage with the specialized knowledge of WashU faculty and researchers in medicine, law and public health, as well as frontline activists in the St. Louis region to explore how scholars and students alongside an interdisciplinary group of strategic collaborators from inside and outside academia can advance the cause for reproductive rights.

The Politics of Reproduction, Race, and Power

The Politics of Reproduction, Race, and Power was a spring 2024 interdisciplinary studiolab course open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates, co-taught by Professor Shanti Parikh (AFAS, Anthropology, WGSS) and practicing civil rights litigator Denise Lieberman (Law). It  offered an engaged space for students to learn about and develop projects around the topic of the politics of reproduction. Students used interdisciplinary approaches to understand historical, medical, legal, racialized, and sociocultural issues surrounding reproductive choice, regulation of choice, abortion, pregnancy, sex education, new reproductive technologies, and reproductive justice movements, and examined the connections between scholarly findings and current policies, organizational initiatives, and public concerns. Enrolled students:

  • Worked with community partners 
  • Mapped reproductive health in Missouri 
  • Engaged with political decision-makers at the Missouri State Capitol 

COURSE WEBSITE

Sexual Health and the City

A STUDIOLAB COURSE ON THE POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION

This fall 2023 course created an engaged space for students to learn about and develop projects with a community agency around the topic of the politics of reproduction.

About this course

Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights

Launched in fall 2022, the Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights working group drew on the rich history of reproductive justice, a concept emerging from and indebted to the embodied activism of women of color. Supported by the Center for the Humanities and funded by WashU’s Office of the Provost, the working group organized the symposium Reflecting on Reproductive Justice in fall 2024. 

The Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights working group was comprised of faculty from across many disciplines and four schools at WashU, including conveners Rachel Brown (Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), Seanna Leath (Psychological & Brain Sciences) and Zakiya Luna (Sociology). Additional contributors include faculty from Biomedical Engineering, Latin American Studies, Law, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health, Social Policy, Sociology, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Working group members collaborate to generate ideas, build relationships with community partners, develop common research areas and draw from the expertise of people both at and beyond WashU with the goal of launching a sustainable cross-school and cross-community endeavor. 

Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights working group conveners (from left) Rachel Brown, Seanna Leath and Zakiya Luna

The working group was especially dedicated to fostering project work that centers the experiences of frontline practitioners in reproductive health and justice, who often need to prioritize directly helping their constituents, clients and members over academic semester timelines or long-term research projects. This is particularly important as the people most affected by current reproductive challenges of the political climate of Missouri are disproportionately Black, poor and/or rural. In collaborative process as well as symposium planning, the Reproductive Justice, Health, Rights working group attempted to model key reproductive justice practices as well as understanding and addressing political, racialized, gendered and public discourse around reproductive justice and its attendant themes of intimate practices and norms surrounding bodily autonomy and sexual practice.

During the symposium “Reflecting on Reproductive Justice,” co-conveners Seanna Leath (Psychological & Brain Sciences) and Zakiya Luna (Sociology), both at Washington University in St. Louis, discuss the future of the reproductive justice movement with Loretta Ross, an activist, public intellectual, scholar, the 2022 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award and an associate professor of the study of women and gender at Smith College.