BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//208.94.116.123//NONSGML kigkonsult.se iCalcreator 2.26.9// CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-FROM-URL:https://www.noahgreenstein.com/wordpress X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20231105T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 RDATE:20241103T020000 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20240310T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 RDATE:20250309T020000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:ai1ec-7950@www.noahgreenstein.com/wordpress DTSTAMP:20240329T145840Z CATEGORIES;LANGUAGE=en-US:Columbia U CONTACT:https://sofheyman.org/events/conception-and-its-discontents DESCRIPTION:
A conference hosted by the Motherhood and Technology Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference on the theme of “Conception and Its Discontents.”
\nMedical technologies have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood. Advances in genomic an d reproductive care\, the circulation of novel kinship structures\, the en trenchment of existing global networks of power and privilege\, and the po litics of contested bodily sites mark this emerging constellation.
\nTechnological advancements have in particular impacted not just the under standing of conception\, but the very process by which a human embryo is c reated\, implanted\, and matured. Egg freezing\, embryo storage\, IVF\, an d surrogacy afford women new freedoms in choosing when and how to become m others\, while also raising troubling questions about the pressures of cap italism and the extension of worklife\, as well as the global inequalities present in the experience of motherhood. In addition\, technologies have arisen allowing for unprecedented control over not just who becomes a moth er\, but what kind of embryo is allowed to be implanted and to grow. Techn ologies such as CRISPR and NIPT have re-introduced the question of eugenic s\, radically shifting the very epistemology of motherhood and what it mea ns to be “expecting.” And contemporary abortion debates draw on technology in order to make arguments both for and against access\, with imaging tec hnologies being instrumentalized in the building of a sympathetic case for the unborn\, and the very notion of a “heartbeat bill” reliant on the mis reading of technologies for measuring fetal activity.
\nWhile these problems are urgent today\, questions of conception and technology are by no means recent developments. The 18th century saw a flourishing of philos ophical and scientific theories regarding the start of human life and its formation within the womb. Such theories relied on modern technologies\, s uch as autopsy\, to atomize and visualize the body. In the 19th and 20th c enturies\, eugenic medical science produced theories of reproductive diffe rence between differing racial and social groups\, leading to forced steri lization laws in both the US and in Germany. This long history of racializ ing the rhetoric of fertility and motherhood continues to influence politi cal debates on immigration and demographic changes in the present.
\nFull conference details and schedule to come.
\nPleas
e email disability@columbia.edu
a> to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to ar
range for some accessibility needs
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