Welcome to the newly-formed William & Mary student affiliate chapter of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Historical Association (AHA), the Berkshire Conference has begun to establish student affiliate groups made up of both undergraduate and graduate students. William & Mary has been chosen to spearhead this initiative, alongside Western Kentucky University, Norfolk State University, Santa Clara University, University of California, Irvine and Texas State University.
Our goal is to help bolster the humanities at William & Mary through student engagement supported by the resources of the Berkshire Conference, which hosts the world’s largest conference on the history of women, genders, and sexualities, and also supports humanities scholarship in these fields. To accomplish this goal, we are launching this blog series with posts written by our student fellows. The William and Mary chapter is composed of American Studies and History graduate and undergraduate students. We come from all different educational backgrounds and research interests, and these blog posts will reflect the wide array of perspectives and approaches we bring to our work.
Each post seeks to answer the question: How can we use humanities to understand our current crisis in democracy? We use this question to explore for whom democracy is in crisis and the ways in which these communities are historically and currently targeted.Over the next several weeks, these blog posts will think through the assault against bodily autonomy and reproductive justice in the United States through historical, cultural, and legal approaches. In June 2022 the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization that a Mississippi state law enforcing a 15 week ban on abortion did not violate the Constitution. This ruling also argued that both Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood were wrongfully decided, thus overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. Dobbs overturned any federal protections for abortion and now each state is deciding what reproductive rights it will protect.In the weeks after the Dobbs decision, “trigger” laws in 13 states fully banned abortion, and many more states are actively determining whether partial or full bans will be enacted.
Currently, only ten states have abortion protection regulations on the books. Overturning Roe has not only resulted in people’s inability to practice bodily autonomy when making the decision to terminate a pregnancy, but also reignited longstanding debates about the degree to which subjected peoples are allowed autonomy over their bodies. Along with the overturning of Roe, the Dobbs decision gestures towards reaching into other recently-granted constitutional rights, such as same-sex marriage. When viewed from a reproductive justice framework, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the Dobbs decision initiated a full-scale attack on a broad swath of rights concerning one’s right to their bodies and what they do with it.
The analyses and thoughts from our members provide important context for current debates surrounding women’s rights broadly. To give a brief preview into what is coming, we have multiple blog posts lined up that will provide historical context and chart out the modern-day repercussions for eugenics, abortion, and medical racism. Our first post by Emily Magness will foreground ongoing Supreme Court Cases concerning the Indian Child Welfare Act in Indian Country. From the courtroom, we move to the doctor’s office where Levi Goldson will explore connections between Blackness and bodily autonomy. By understanding the medicalization of Black women’s bodies and debates on whether women “deserve” bodily autonomy, we can better understand how we might enact change. Thalia Chrysanthis will place Roe v. Wade in a broader chronology with early legal battles over access to birth control and privacy cases. From there, Jessica Brabble discusses the contemporary repercussions of the United States’ long history of eugenics and its connection to abortion. Sam Haddad provides a transatlantic perspective on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade earlier this year through a comparative study of the legacy of legalized abortion in Ireland. We will close out this series on women’s rights and bodies with Rebekah Toussaint, who will talk about the gap in mortality rates between women of color and white women in the United States and will situate these statistics globally.Ultimately, we hope these blog posts provide alternative possibilities for the future by de-naturalizing legal decisions and cultural norms surrounding women’s bodies in the US.
We hope you find this series illuminating and educational, and that you will follow along with our efforts! You can keep up to date on how we are facilitating an interdisciplinary approach to explore how the humanities can contextualize and help us understand current day issues surrounding women’s rights, gender and sexuality, and bodily autonomy on our website and Twitter feed.
Author: Sydney Sweat-Montoya, Ph.D. Student, Department of History
Sydney’s research interests include borderlands, sovereignty, and economic culture in the Caribbean. Her current research project explores how the Spanish and British empires conceptualized settlements in the southern Yucatán during the eighteenth century. Sydney received her B.A. in History from University of West Georgia. She holds an M.A. in History from Virginia Tech where her research focused on fiscal policy and taxation in the early United States.