Programme Overview
Fertile Imaginations: Reproductive Health in Literature, 27th-28th August 2026
Our Keynote Speakers:
Isabel Davis (National History Museum London), Jennifer Evans (University of Hertfordshire), 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
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09:00, Hall Mosaïque
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Registration opens
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09:30, MIS 03 3115
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Welcome
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09:45, MIS 03 3115
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Isabel Davis (National History Museum, London): “The Cylindrical, Catoptrical, Rotundo-Concavo-Convex Machine: The Metaphor of Wind in Imagining Conception”
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11:00, Hall Mosaïque
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Coffee Break
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11:30, MIS 03 3115
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Jennifer Heller (Lenoir-Rhyne University): "'Great with childe to speak': Maternal Metaphor and Material Culture in Early Modern Literature"
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12:45
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Lunch at Mensa
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14:15
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Panel 1, MIS 03 3018
Motherhood, Genre and Form
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Panel 2, MIS 03 3016
Maternity and Morality
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Panel Chair:
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Panel Chair:
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Alice Hall (University of York), "Disability, Animality and Transformation: Collaboration in Claire Oshetsky's Chouette"
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Rahel Orgis (University of Bern), "Fertile Absences? Mary Wroth's representation of childbed death and its consequences in the Urania"
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Roberta Garrett (University of East London), "Brave 'Girls' and Angry Women: The Affective Economies of Motherhood in Domestic Noir and Literary Fiction"
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Laura Lazzari (The Sasso Corbaro Foundation for the Medical Humanities (Bellinzona) and Georgetown University), "Spiraling Narratives: Stillbirth and Grief in Three Contemporary Memoirs (An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Ghost Belly, and From the Lake House)"
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Emily Anderson (University of Constance), "Motherhood and Other Magical Transformations in Rachel Yoder's Magical Feminist novel Night Bitch"
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Valerie Heffernan (University of Maynooth), "Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss in Literature"
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15:45, Hall Mosaïque
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Coffee Break
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16:15, Mis 03 3115
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Elizabeth Podnieks (Toronto Metropolitan University): “Postmaternal Memoirs: Motherhood, Aging, and the Rise of ‘Empty Nest’ Narratives”
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18:00, Hall Mosaïque
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Welcome Reception
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19:30
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Dinner at restaurant Molino, rue de Lausanne 93
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Friday, 28 August 2026
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9:30, MIS 03 3115
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Jennifer Evans (University of Hertfordshire): “‘my poor Sis[ter]: Davenports misfortun’: Family Discussions of Miscarriage in the Early Eighteenth Century”
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10:45, Hall Mosaïque
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Coffee Break
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11:15
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Panel 3, MIS 03 3018
Non-Normative Parenthood
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Panel 4, MIS 03 3115
The Biological Clock
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Panel 5, MIS 03 3016
Fertility and Literary Form
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Panel Chair:
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Panel Chair:
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Panel Chair:
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Jennifer Cooke (University of Loughborough), "Surrogacy, Genetics, and White Supremacy in Contemporary Literature"
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Aline Ferreira (University of Aveiro), "Defying Biology: Fictional Narratives of Lifelong Fertility"
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Leila Michelle Vaziri (University of Constance), "Pregnancy's Affordances in Early 20th-Century Narrative Literature"
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Jemma Walton (Birkbeck College, University of London), "Surrogacy, Care and Heterosexual Legitimacy in Sophie Beresiner's The Mother Project (2021)"
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Sydni Zastre (University of Birmingham), "Birthing time: Writing the temporality of labour in the interwar British 'pregnant genre'"
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Julia Straub (University of Fribourg), "Reading the Maternal Experience Closely in Contemporary Fiction"
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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)"
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Jessica Edwards (Goldsmiths University), "Imagining a Reproductive Lifecycle through Premature Menopause"
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14:15
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Panel 6, MIS 03 3018
Motherhood in Perspective
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Panel 7, MIS 03 3016
Abortion Stories
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Panel Chair:
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Panel Chair:
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Magdalena Rozenberg (University of Uppsala), "Mother is ill. A daughter's intersubjective illness in the Norwegian novel Mothers gift"
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Ella Berny (Queen Mary University of London), "Bringing abortion to writing: can poetry help us tell new abortion stories?"
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Julie Rodgers (Maynooth University), "Representing the Trauma of Disembodied Pregnancy in La Décision (Isabelle Pandazopolus, 2013)"
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Ina Batzke (University of Augsburg), "Literary Imaginations of Abortion in Early 20th-Century US Literature"
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Ida Aaskov Dolmer (University of Southern Denmark), "Discovering Danish Abortion Literature"
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15:45, Hall Mosaïque
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Coffee Break
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16:15 - 17:30
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Final Roundtable with Caroline Rusterholz, Isabel Davis, and Martina King
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Chairs: Honor Jackson and Julia Straub
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