“Disability and Reproductive Justice”

Disability activists have long been concerned with ableist approaches to pregnancy and abortion. Disabled people also face many barriers to reproductive health care and have a heightened risk of sexual assault and pregnancies they did not choose. How does a disability studies lens reshape some of the conversations about reproductive justice?

All members of the Rice community and public are welcome.

Speaker:

Alison Kafer

Director of LGBTQ Studies, Embrey Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Associate Professor of English, University of Texas at Austin

Alison Kafer co-edited (in collaboration with Mel Y. Chen, Eunjung Kim, and Julie Avril Minich) the anthology Crip Genealogies (Duke, 2023), which explores the divergent experiences, commitments, and histories that both constitute the field of disability studies and imperil its foundations. She is the author of Feminist, Queer, Crip (Indiana, 2013), and her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; Crip Authorship; the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies; Sex and Disability; and South Atlantic Quarterly. Her research is focused on disability and queer crip world-making in the contemporary United States, particularly as they intersect with movements and theories for reproductive, environmental, gender, and racial justice.

Sponsored by the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, with support from the School of Humanities Dean’s Office.