CFP: Eire-Ireland Special Issue on Reproductive Justice and the Politics of Women’s Health

Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies and guest editors Dr. Cara Delay (College of Charleston) and Dr. Claire Bracken (Union College) welcome submissions for a Spring/ Summer 2021 special issue on Reproductive Justice and the Politics of Women’s Health in Ireland.

The 2018 repeal of the Eighth Amendment, as well as recent revelations about twentieth-century mother-and-baby homes, the Magdalene Laundries, the cervical-cancer scandal, and the treatment of women asylum seekers held in the direct provision system suggest the need to explore the historical and cultural contexts for reproductive justice and women’s health in Ireland, in both the Republic and the North. This special issue of Éire-Ireland will examine such issues from the early twentieth century through the contemporary period.

What might a history of women’s health look like in Ireland? How do women’s narratives of their interaction with health professionals illuminate the patriarchal systems of medical care in twentieth-century Ireland? How do Traveller, refugee, and asylum-seeking women experience health care? What does an analysis of rights for transgender individuals through the politics of healthcare reveal? In what way do neoliberal narratives of ability underwrite a late capitalist medical system in Ireland, and how does this impact women’s health care? How can intersectional analyses generate a better understanding of inequalities of access? Indeed, what does it mean to use the terms “reproductive justice” and “women’s health”? This special issue will contribute to the interdisciplinary field of narrative medicine, which emphasizes the potential of storytelling to unravel the complex relationships among women’s health, illness, and the body.

 

Full details available here: Éire-Ireland CFP April 2019