Interrogating Pregnancy Loss

Whereas biomedical and feminist literature treat abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirth as differently conceptualized events, this collection explores the connections between these three categories. How have feminist debates and strategies around reproductive choice invigorated the cultural conversation about miscarriage and stillbirth? How can we imagine more nuanced engagements with the spectrum of experiences that are at stake when a pregnancy ends? And how can we effectively create a space where pregnant people contend with the ways that loss makes meaning for those who grieve and/or celebrate the end of pregnancy?  This collection centres pregnancy loss as an embodied and social phenomenon within a framework that understands pregnancy as a process with no guaranteed outcomes.  Interrogating Pregnancy Loss considers pregnancy as an epistemic source, one that has the capacity to reveal the limits of our collective assumptions about temporality, expectation, narrative, and social legitimacy. By interrogating loss, this collection argues that the lessons learned from loss have the capacity to serve our collective understandings of both the expected and unexpected rhythms of social and reproductive life.

Emily R.M. Lind is a doctoral candidate at Carleton University’s Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture. Her research examines the intersections between identity, materiality, power, and knowledge production in interdisciplinary contexts. She is currently writing her dissertation on settler colonialism, Canadian art, and early twentieth-century Toronto. Angie Deveau is a graduate of York University’s Women’s Studies M.A. Program and has been working for the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement for nearly five years. Previously, she provided research assistance for York University’s Gender & Work Database, York University’s ‘Women’s Human Rights, Macroeconomics and Policy Choices’ project and the ‘Adolescent Health and Wellbeing Study’ at UNB. In addition to her background in research, Angie has worked as a Case Management Assistant for the Province of Nova Scotia’s Department of Community Services (Social Assistance Division), and as the Community Development Coordinator for the Victorian Order of Nurses/Help the Aged project in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She is currently in the planning stages of co-editing a collection on Mothering and Yoga, Meditation, and Mindfulness.