The Personal is Political: Creative Writing for Reproductive Justice

Catalog description

Through what artistic and aesthetic techniques can we most effectively harness the power of political storytelling? In this creative writing course, we'll read narrative journalism, personal essays, and contemporary fiction that expand and complicate our understanding of what's at stake in the fight for reproductive justice. We will hear firsthand from activists about the writers and thinkers that shaped their work, the relationship between reading and changemaking, and the importance of amplifying new, more expansive definitions of reproductive justice. We'll consider how a craft-based approach allows us to avoid the didactic and lean into the complexity, nuance, and intimacy that the best political writing has to offer. Students will be supported in conceptualizing, executing, and revising an individual creative writing project - fiction, personal narrative, or hybrid form - that represents a thoughtful contribution to the question: What does reproductive justice mean to you? In the first half of the course, we'll be engaged mostly with the stories of others - using the reproductive justice theoretical framework to contextualize fiction, memoir, and political narrative. During this time, students will begin formulating an idea for their final creative project, and the final four weeks of the class will focus on drafting and revision. Our inquiries will focus on questions of craft and the power of narrative technique to lead us to more complex, personal, and inclusive understandings of reproductive justice.