UMBC's Social Sciences Forum presents the Annual Korenman Lecture, featuring Jennifer C. Nash, Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, who will speak on “‘In the Room’: Women of Color Doulas in a State of Emergency,”

“In the Room” explores the work of women of color doulas laboring in Chicago in an era where doulas are increasingly hailed—by the state and by activists—as precisely the innovation that can save black mothers’ lives. Dr. Nash explores the complicated tensions around professionalization and the medicalization of birth that underpins their practice, and considers the place of their work in the ongoing effort to eradicate black infant and maternal mortality.

Nash earned her PhD in African American Studies at Harvard University and her JD at Harvard Law School. She is the author of The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography (awarded the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association) and Black Feminism Reimagined (awarded the Gloria Anzaldúa Book Prize by the National Women’s Studies Association). Her third book, Birthing Black Mothers, will be published by Duke University Press in 2021. She is also the editor of Gender: Love (Macmillan, 2016). Her research has been supported by the ACLS/Burkhardt Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute, and the Woodrow Wilson Junior Faculty Career Enhancement Fellowship.

Please join this event here via Webex. Admission is free.

The Social Sciences Forum is presented UMBC's Center for Social Science Scholarship. The Korenman Lecture is organized by the Department of Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies and is co-sponsored by the Provost’s Office; the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Departments of Africana Studies, American Studies, Media and Communications Studies, Political Science, and School of Social Work; the Public Humanities Minor; and the Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging (i3B).

Photo: Geoff Martin