9781501307133

1501307134

"Current debates about birth control can be surprisingly volatile, especially given the near-universal use of contraception among American and British women. Conceived in Modernism: The Aesthetics and Politics of Birth Control offers a new perspective on these debates by demonstrating that the political positions surrounding birth control have roots in literary concerns, specifically those of modernist writers. Whereas most scholarship treats modernism and birth control activism as parallel, but ultimately separate, movements, Conceived in Modernism shows that they were deeply intertwined. This book argues not only that literary concerns exerted a lasting influence on the way activists framed the emerging politics of contraception, but that birth control activism helped shape some of modernism's most innovative concepts. By revealing the presence of literary aesthetics in the discourse surrounding birth control, Conceived in Modernism helps us see this discourse as a variable facet rather than a permanent bulwark of reproductive rights debates"-- Provided by publisher.

"Offers a new perspective on the politics of contraception by showing that Anglo-American birth control rhetoric has roots in modernism"-- Provided by publisher.

Machine generated contents note:

Introduction

Chapter 1: Modernism, Monsters, and Margaret Sanger

Chapter 2: "God spoke with me to-day": Prophecy, Birth Control, and The Waste Land

Chapter 3: "Sentences swelled, adjectives multiplied": Reproduction and the Modernist Aesthetic

Chapter 4: Southern Mother, Lethal Fetus; Or How Birth Control Makes a Modernist Out of Flannery O'Connor

Chapter 5: Where Alien Abduction Meets Family Planning: Personhood, Race and Reproduction in Octavia Butler's Dawn

Coda

Bibliography

Index.

1900 > 1999

Birth control > United States > History > 20th century.

Birth control > Great Britain > History > 20th century.

American literature > 20th century > History and criticism.

English literature > 20th century > History and criticism.