Reproduction, Maternity, and Abortion in Latin America

Motherhood is a topic that has long been dismissed as trivially feminine and therefore understudied as a literary theme. However, during the 21st Century, there has been a boom of Latin American literature with maternal themes. In this course, we will consider essays, novels, and poetry with themes such as pregnancy, miscarriage, fertility, abortion, family planning, birth, adoption, and communal motherhood practices. The goal is to give students the analytic tools to understand the conditions that gave rise to this trend and how these works invoke and/or resist essentialist and patriarchal notions of motherhood. Texts may include Margaret Gibson’s Queering Motherhood, Linda Kerber’s “The Republican Mother,” Lina Meruane’s Contra los hijos, Pilar Quintana’s La perra, and Isabela Zapata’s In vitro.