Programme Overview
Fertile Imaginations: Reproductive Health in Literature, 27th-28th August 2026
Our Keynote Speakers:
Isabel Davis (National History Museum London), Lisa Smith (University of Essex), Jennifer Heller (Lenoir-Rhyne University), Elizabeth Podnieks (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Click here for a detailed overview
The conference programme, Fertile Imaginations: Reproductive Health in Literature, is now out. See below or download the PDF in the side panel. You can also download the Book of Abstracts in the side panel.
Thursday, 27 August 2026
|
09:00, Hall Mosaïque
|
Registration opens
|
|
|
09:30, MIS 03 3115
|
Welcome
|
|
|
09:45, MIS 03 3115
|
Isabel Davis (National History Museum, London): “The Cylindrical, Catoptrical, Rotundo-Concavo-Convex Machine: The Metaphor of Wind in Imagining Conception”
|
|
|
11:00, Hall Mosaïque
|
Coffee Break
|
|
|
11:30, MIS 03 3115
|
Jennifer Heller (Lenoir-Rhyne University): "'Great with childe to speak': Maternal Metaphor and Material Culture in Early Modern Literature"
|
|
|
12:45
|
Lunch at Mensa
|
|
|
14:15
|
Panel 1, MIS 03 3014
Motherhood, Genre and Form
|
Panel 2, MIS 03 3016
Maternity and Morality
|
|
|
Panel Chair: Julia Straub
|
Panel Chair: Marion Buchs
|
|
|
Alice Hall (University of York), "Disability, Animality and Transformation: Collaboration in Claire Oshetsky's Chouette"
|
Rahel Orgis (University of Bern), "Fertile Absences? Mary Wroth's representation of childbed death and its consequences in the Urania"
|
|
|
Roberta Garrett (University of East London), "Brave 'Girls' and Angry Women: The Affective Economies of Motherhood in Domestic Noir and Literary Fiction"
|
Laura Lazzari (Georgetown University and The Sasso Corbaro Foundation for the Medical Humanities, Bellinzona), "Spiraling Narratives: Stillbirth and Grief in Two Contemporary Memoirs: An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination and Ghost Belly"
|
|
|
Emily Anderson (University of Constance), "Motherhood and Other Magical Transformations in Rachel Yoder's Magical Feminist novel Night Bitch"
|
Orlagh Woods (Vilnius University), "'The one that matters': Reproductive Loss and Narrative Resistance in Emilie Pine's Notes to Self (2018)"
|
|
15:45, Hall Mosaïque
|
Coffee Break
|
|
|
16:15, Mis 03 3115
|
Elizabeth Podnieks (Toronto Metropolitan University): “Postmaternal Memoirs: Motherhood, Aging, and the Rise of ‘Empty Nest’ Narratives”
|
|
|
18:00, Hall Mosaïque
|
Welcome Reception
|
|
|
19:30
|
Dinner at restaurant Molino, rue de Lausanne 93
|
|
Friday, 28 August 2026
|
9:30, MIS 03 3115
|
Lisa Smith (University of Essex): “‘Thinking with Herbs: Fertility in Eighteenth-Century England”
|
|
|
10:45, Hall Mosaïque
|
Coffee Break
|
|
|
11:15
|
Panel 3, MIS 03 3014
Non-Normative Parenthood
|
Panel 4, MIS 03 3115
The Biological Clock
|
Panel 5, MIS 03 3016
Fertility and Literary Form
|
|
|
Panel Chair:
|
Panel Chair:
|
Panel Chair: Michael Boyden
|
|
|
Jennifer Cooke (University of Loughborough), "Surrogacy, Genetics, and White Supremacy in Contemporary Literature"
|
Honor Jackson (University of Fribourg), "Securing Generation? Reproductive UNcertainty in Charles Cotton's Erōtopolis"
|
Leila Michelle Vaziri (University of Constance), "Pregnancy's Affordances in Early 20th-Century Narrative Literature"
|
|
|
Jemma Walton (Birkbeck College, University of London), "‘I was it. Both. All. The lot’:
Surrogacy and Solo Fatherhood in Ian Mucklejohn’s Memoirs"
|
Jessica Edwards (Goldsmiths University), "Imagining a Reproductive Lifecycle through Premature Menopause"
|
Julia Straub (University of Fribourg), "Contemporary Motherhood Writing as Literary Criticism"
|
|
|
Sabine von Rütte (University of Bern), "Trans/Parent Bodies: Normativity, Visibility and Trans Parental Embodiment in Krys Malcolm Belc's The Natural Mother of the Child (2021)"
|
|
Marion Buchs (University of Fribourg), "Exposing the Script of Motherhood – Tactical Turn to Drama in Claudia Rankine's Plot (2001) and Erica Hesketh's In the Lily Room (2025)"
|
|
14:15
|
Panel 6, MIS 03 3014
Motherhood in Perspective
|
Panel 7, MIS 03 3016
Abortion Stories
|
|
|
Panel Chair: Sabine von Rütte
|
Panel Chair: Honor Jackson
|
|
|
Magdalena Rozenberg (University of Uppsala), "Mother is ill. A daughter's intersubjective illness in the Norwegian novel Mothers gift"
|
Ella Berny (Queen Mary University of London), "Bringing abortion to writing: can poetry help us tell new abortion stories?"
|
|
|
Valerie Heffernan (Maynooth University), "Literary Representation of Maternal Ambivalence and Regret"
|
Ina Batzke (University of Augsburg), "Literary Imaginations of Abortion in Early 20th-Century US Literature"
|
|
|
|
Ida Aaskov Dolmer (University of Southern Denmark), "Discovering Danish Abortion Literature"
|
|
15:45, Hall Mosaïque
|
Coffee Break
|
|
|
16:15 - 17:30, MIS 03 3115
|
Final Roundtable with Caroline Rusterholz, Isabel Davis, and Jennifer Cooke
|
|
|
|
Chairs: Honor Jackson and Julia Straub
|
|