Women and Gender Studies Class Partners with Libraries to Offer “Listening for Reproductive Justice”

Thursday, December 7, 2023
4:30 p.m.
Alumnae Gymnasium, third floor

The Smith community is invited to attend “Listening for Reproductive Justice,” a collection of podcasts created by 47 students taking Intro to Women and Gender Studies (SWG150) this fall.

The project, now in its second year, took flight after Women and Gender Studies Lecturer/Archives Concentration Director Kelly Anderson attended the Digital Pedagogy Fellowship in 2022. The fellowship is a practice-based professional learning experience offered by the Learning Research & Technology (LRT) department and assists faculty seeking to incorporate technology into their teaching, as well as create innovative digital scholarship with their students.

“The goal for [the fellowship] was to create a digital assignment in one of our courses for the next year. I felt like SWG150 needed an update and I wanted to incorporate a public-facing assignment,” Anderson says.

That same summer, the Digital Pedagogy Fellowship took place amid an especially historic moment in time, as Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court. “My students will arrive at Smith wanting to know more about how and why that SCOTUS decision was made and what movement-building has looked like over time, and I knew we had the archival documents in the Sophia Smith Collection to help us tell that story,” Anderson recalls. “As a former staff member in the SSC and as director of the Archives Concentration, I'm always looking for new and creative ways to use archives in my courses that feel relevant to what is going on in the world today.”

 “Listening for Reproductive Justice” is a culmination of SWG150 student research, with each podcast taking a different approach to addressing the post-Roe crisis in abortion care, reproductive justice, and bodily autonomy. The event invites participants to listen to the podcasts and converse with fellow attendees about what they heard.

“Listening for Reproductive Justice” has been a collaboration with Libraries staff, whose support has included research skills building, archives instruction, website and podcast workshops, and one-on-one student mentorship, and with SWG colleagues Loretta Ross and Carrie Baker, who shared their expertise in reproductive justice.

All podcasts from 2022 and 2023 are available to the public.

Contact

Kelly Anderson
Women and Gender Studies Lecturer/Archives Concentration Director
kpanders@smith.edu