Motherhood and Technology: From Concept

This seminar will explore how technological innovations have radically transformed the experience of biological motherhood, from (pre-)conception to pregnancy and birth. The twenty-first century has seen rapid advances in genomic and reproductive care, the circulation of new family and kinship structures, the entrenchment of existing global networks of power and privilege, and the politics of contested bodily sites. But while technology might seem to be the main driver of these changes, the revolution in motherhood is as much a product of transformation in other domains: ethics, social structures, aesthetics, and experience.

Together, we will work to understand how medical technologies have changed—and have been changed by—the experience of biological motherhood in a global context. We will encounter technologies for regulating and shaping biological motherhood: for instance, contraceptive devices, pregnancy tests, genetic editing tools, egg freezing and cryogenic storage for embryos, prenatal tests and scans, gestational surrogacy and its global commercial markets, and new frontiers of technology which enable novel forms of biological parentage (e.g. gestational parenthood for trans men; babies with the DNA of two fathers). At every turn, we will consider not only the positive and liberating affordances of such technologies, but also the (sometimes unexamined) burdens that trail their imbrication in the lives of mothers and parents.

The seminar will particularly suit students who are interested in the medical humanities, in pre-medical studies, in literary memoir, and in bioethics and critical theory.