Jenna DiMaggio

Counter Fellow, English

Beyond Choice: Narrating Abortion Before Roe

My manuscript, Beyond Choice, reads pre-Roe v. Wade American literature to generate what I call “abortion epistemologies:” the heterogenous modes of knowledge produced about abortion through its narrative representations. Opposing the language of “choice” that dominates abortion politics, I turn to texts that emphasize relationality and affect to counter our contemporary discursive habits and the conceptualization of abortion upon which they rely.