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Transformations: Gender, Reproduction and Contemporary Society

Transformations: Gender, Reproduction and Contemporary Society. Intermediate Year 30 CATS 3 Terms. Introduction. T akes something apparently ordinary and routine – having and bringing up children – and renders it strange

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Transformations: Gender, Reproduction and Contemporary Society

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  1. Transformations: Gender, Reproduction and Contemporary Society Intermediate Year 30 CATS 3 Terms

  2. Introduction • Takes something apparently ordinary and routine – having and bringing up children – and renders it strange • Reproduction generates anxiety and various institutions seek to govern it • Media representations sensationalise reproduction • Ordinary people are getting on with having and raising children in increasingly diverse ways • Transformations addresses changing practices and discourses about reproduction • Mainly UK based but with some international perspectives • Informed by feminist approaches

  3. Key Questions • Why do women have children? Why do men have children? Who needs children? • Do we have a right to be parents? To adopt, to infertility treatment? • How do narratives of class, ‘race’/ethnicity, age, sexuality, (dis)ability inform ideas about who’s ‘fit’ to parent? • Why is late motherhood so frowned on? • To what extent does femininity rely on motherhood? • What’s the dominant construction of ‘good fathering’? • Where does the ‘breast is best’ narrative leave mothers who don’t want to or can’t breast-feed?

  4. Parenting: Genetic Gestational Social • Link between biological and social parenting can’t be assumed • Why does separation of the two generate such anxiety?

  5. What do the new reproductive technologies mean? - are contraceptive technologies neutral or do they re/produce wider social norms and inequalities? - what’s at stake in the abortion debate? - Is IVF a modern miracle or a usually unsuccessful risk? - Does testing in pregnancy increase or decrease pregnant women’s anxieties? - Is genetic testing a valuable application of science or a Frankenstein-like horror?

  6. Practicalities • Be prepared for a lot of participation, in lectures and seminars, with structure and support • Group project in term 2 culminating in 15-20 minute presentation to class • Group project lays foundations for assessed work • Standard choice of assessment • All core readings electronic • Have a look online: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/staff/academicstaff/wrightc/home/teaching/transform • Ask current students

  7. Thanks for listening… Any questions?

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