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 draft for the conference programme, Fertile Imaginations: Reproductive Health in Literature, is now out. See below or download the PDF in the side panel.

This is a draft and still subject to change!

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)"
12:45 Lunch at Mensa
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

Find information on: 

You will be able to download the final programme here