Course Title: Reproduction Before, Since, & Beyond Roe
What is this course about? Reproduction Before, Since, & Beyond Roe is a course on the history of reproductive health, labor, and politics in the United States. It’s divided into three units—before, since, and beyond Roe v. Wade—and we draw on a range of materials, including primary sources, historical analyses, feminist and queer theory, and documentaries to understand these concepts and how they have changed over time.
What does feminist pedagogy look like in your classroom? For me, a big part of feminist pedagogy is the recognition that the work we do in Gender and Women’s Studies classrooms is inherently connected to feminist politics and movements. The students in my class have brought such care and curiosity to the analysis of a deeply politicized topic, and it’s exciting to teach a course where the histories we’re studying have such a strong contemporary resonance.
What does innovative, active learning look like in this course? This semester, my students are writing discussion questions as one of their ongoing assignments. The purpose of the assignment is for students to think critically about the course material as they are engaging with it and to share the responsibility of determining the structure and focus of our class. Ultimately, I want the insights, questions, and concerns of students to drive our conversations. Every single week, I’m energized by the questions students submit.
What is a favorite learning activity that you assign in this course? A few weeks ago we had an in-class archive workshop where students analyzed materials from the Women’s National Abortion Action Coalition collection held at the Wisconsin Historical Society. Students did a wonderful job of piecing together a narrative about the coalition and attending to the different strategies the coalition used in their effort to fight for the liberalization of abortion laws and freedom from reproductive coercion. There is something so compelling about seeing history from “behind-the-scenes” and learning about the real people who make up social movements.
Describe a recent AHA! moment with your students in this class. Early on in the course, when we were situating the significance of Roe v. Wade in the history of reproduction in America, we read a number of position papers on abortion liberalization from the 1960s and early 1970s, learning about the nuances of how different groups—such as the National Organization for Women, the American Medical Association, Zero Population Growth, and the Clergy Consultation Service—defined the scope of reproductive autonomy. I think this was a useful way of complicating how we understand Roe’s accomplishments within the history of reproduction and foregrounding the competing visions of reproductive health, labor, and politics in the United States.
How do you hope this course will help your students beyond the semester they’re working with you? One of the learning outcomes of this course is for students to engage actively and collaboratively in a discussion-based course, and the students have been demonstrating this skill so impressively all semester. Each session of the course benefits both from students’ insights and the mix of passion and sensitivity with which they share them. Honing the skill of working through complex ideas with one another is already a pretty wonderful outcome. I also hope students can take the history we’re studying in class as a resource.