(In)Fertility

Catalog description

In this course, we will examine human fertility as a socially situated phenomenon, emphasizing the ways in which history, tradition, technology, politics and economics affect people's ideas and actions concerning having (or not having) children; and how people carve out their own life courses and fertility choices despite these constraints. The course will explore reproductive politics, technologies, and trends from a global perspective. What are reproductive politics? How do reproductive technologies, from IUDs and birth control pills to IVF and abortion, become tools of personal freedom in some contexts and tools of coercion in other contexts? What are the politics of alternative paths to parenthood, such as adoption, and the politics of opting out of reproduction, no matter its basis, as seen in childfree movements? What are the emotional, political, and economic gains and costs of fertility management and reproduction?