In this issue:

• AAA Meeting Guide with list of panels submitted by Members, including a panel organized by Robbie Davis-Floyd called “Back to the Basics of Birth”

• CAR Advocacy – information about the Carework in the Academy Ad hoc Advocacy Committee, headed by CAR members Sallie Han and Jill Fleuriet

• Important announcement from Robbie Davis-Floyd regarding, among other things, the Annotated Bibliography on CAR’s website and an exciting new Internship opportunity for students

• Notes from the Field – rich ethnographic descriptions and notes including:
  • Gynecology Talk: Race-Sexuality-Class Privilege and Reproductive Encounters by Nessette Falu
  • Nutritional Epigenetics and Prenatal Diets: “I’ve been eating this way for years” by Natali Valdez
  • “Sexual panic” in Bluefields, Nicaragua by Ishan Gordon.

• Community Engagement opportunity – the Projeto aBRAÇO a Microcefalia, in Salvador, Brazil, which support women who have given birth to babies affected by the zika virus.

• Book Award and Member publications
• And more…!

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In this Issue:

Society for Applied Anthropology Annual Meetings 2016 Panel and Paper Guide for Anthropology and Reproduction.

CAR Advocacy Committee Statement on Abortion Legislation Published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

The CAR Advocacy Committee published MAQ Policy Statement opposing restrictive abortion legislation. Read the full statement here: “The Council on Anthropology and Reproduction (CAR) Opposes Legislation that Creates Barriers to Safe Abortion Care.”

Notes from the Field

The Role of Social Movements in Brazil and of UK/Brazil Partnerships in Changing Childbirth by Christine McCourt and Camilla Schneck AND Crisis, Uncertainty, Responsibility: Pregnancy in the Time of Zika by K. Eliza Williamson

Call for Papers on Sustainable Birth for Edited Collection due by May 15th.

In accord with the current focus on sustainability, we explore systematic and innovative solutions to excess maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidity that can be adapted across nations, regions, and communities to restore mother-centered and newborn-centered models of birth. Please send 250-word abstract to Kim.Gutschow@williams.edu by May 15, 2015. For more
information, please contact the editors.

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In this Issue:

• A list of reproduction-related panels and papers at this year’s AAA annual meeting
• Notes from the field, advocacy reports, and conference reports from Jessica Lott, Robin Whitaker, and Mounia El Kotni
• Award announcements
• Recent publications
• News updates from CAR members around the world
• Opportunities and upcoming conferences and symposia
• … and more!

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In this Issue:

CAR meetup at SfAA, Thursday, March 26th

CAR History, “Looking Back: Narrative Histories of CAR”

By Eliza Williamson

For the current issue we asked long-time members to reflect on their experiences in CAR, past and present. We were able to collect two short interviews–one with Robbie Davis-Floyd and the other with Susan Erikson. Lynn Morgan also submitted an early memo on CAR’s advocacy initiatives. Various others helped us gather information on CAR’s beginnings.

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In this Issue:

Notes from the Chair: Notes on Teaching Anthropology

By Sallie Han

Teaching a course in the Anthropology of Reproduction in particular has presented itself as an opportunity – not only for my students, but also for myself – to read across the four fields of anthropology. This semester, I assigned the first chapter of Brigitte Jordan’s Birth in Four Cultures (in which she describes a biosocial approach to childbirth) with evolutionary anthropologist Wenda Trevathan’s “The Evolution of Bipedalism and Assisted Birth,” and Holly Dunsworth’s posts critiquing the obstetrical dilemma hypothesis on The Mermaid’s Tale blog (http://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2012/07/thatobstetrical-dilemma-really-tied.html and http://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2012/08/that-obstetricaldilemma-really-tied.html).

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In This Issue:

Our First CAR Not ­Mentoring Hangout: A Success! By Dick Powis and Lucia Guerra­-Reyes

Now that we know that we can hold a Not-Mentoring Hangout without an issue, we are interested in scheduling them monthly.If you’re interested in participating in a Hangout, if you have an idea for a topic that you would want discussed, or if you just want more information on teleconferencing, please contact Lucia Guerra-Reyes (luciaaguerra@gmail.com) or Dick Powis (richard.powis@gmail.com).

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In This Issue:

Ina May Gaskin Inducted into the National Women’s Hall Of Fame
By: Robbie Davis-Floyd

She gave a brilliant talk. She began by noting that even though she could not legally practice in New York State as a CPM, she had actually and legally attended a birth in New York, on a Native American reservation there that is not officially part of NY. “Balance” was her theme—the balance the Six Nations achieved by having men as chiefs, with a committee of women as the voters who decided what the male leaders could and could not do, such as when they could and could not go to war.

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In This Issue:

Membership Column:
Eggs, feathers, and tweets: more CAR news for members
By Claire Wendland

In a heartfelt op-ed piece for CNN, CAR member Marcia Inhorn recently pleaded “Women, consider freezing your eggs.” Inhorn’s editorial hit notes that will sound familiar to many anthropologists of reproduction: she described the relentless pace and overwhelming work expectations of academic life that pushed her own choice to become pregnant later and later. Drawing on her own experience, and noting that women with career ambitions face a “fertility penalty,” Inhorn ended the piece by explaining that she will now begin recommending egg freezing to her female graduate students. While the editorial did mention some of the concerns one might have about the technology, it downplayed them in portraying egg freezing as a “technological game-changer” that may allow women to “have it all” after all

In This Issue:

Notes From the Field:
“Hurry Up and Wait: Patience in Preliminary Field Research”
By Jess Newman

Still without this experience, I wouldn’t have gotten a glimpse at what awareness-raising and activism look like before it even registers in public consciousness. In 2008, the Moroccan Association for Family Planning (AMPF) publish an exploratory study on unsafe abortion (avortment á risques) in the hopes of sparking a debate about abortion’s criminalization. It met with indifferent results, prompting only a few non-committal public statements from politicians. A few articles surface in local media about a gynecologist who was fast becoming politicized as a result of treating so many women with complications from botched abortions, but the discussion ended there.

 

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In This Issue:

Notes From the Field of an Embryo Ethnographer
By Risa Cromer

With all that is happening across the United States concerning women’s reproductive health and autonomy-personhood amendments, funding attack on Planned Parenthood and their patients, incarcerations of women like Bei Bei Shuari, government mandated ultrasounds, and remarkable statement about pills between our knees-I want to offer a few windows into a world where embryonic personhood is the status quo. I highlight examples of grief an loss with embryo adoption and consider some resonant examples from my volunteer works as a peer counselor. Even across gulfs like embryonic personhood, I believe it is worthwhile to identify shared reproductive experiences, such as grief or loss. 

 

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In This Issue:

A Transnational Alliance in the Argentine Campaign For Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion
By Lynn M. Morgan and Mónica Tarducci

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In This Issue:

 For me, finding The Spoiler hasn’t just been an obstacle to overcome, but an integral part of my fieldwork process. It helped me to understand, in a surprising way, Xhosa motherhood and emotion through the lens of race and historical oppression, which has been invaluable to my nascent analysis. And learning to shed the parts of my behavior and mindset that are “too white” has helped me to get closer to my research participants in ways that that didn’t seem possible a year ago. My professors were right, you do have to becognizant of your predecessors and clean up their mess before you can do your “good” work, and all you need is a new twist on the basic tenants of ethnographic inquiry—be open, be patient, keep your perspective, let go of your “self,” be culturally relative, remain inquisitive, and don’t be too hard on yourself.

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In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
Anthropology and Advocacy
By Wendy Chavkin

 Advocacy is a messy undertaking and necessitates collaboration. One has to understand both those likely to support and to oppose your position and appreciate the ways in which potential allies might complement or frustrate some of your approaches. This implies developing an awareness of the varied contributions different actors can make to effective advocacy, while simultaneously refining your vision of the role of the anthropologist/ researcher. 

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In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
Paying it Forward
By Elly Teman

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In This Issue:

Mentorship Column:
What I Learned about Writing a Book Manuscript
By Sallie Han

 Each month, one woman’s work (like a book chapter or conference paper) is offered as the “entrée” and a second woman’s work is the “side dish” (like an abstract for a conference). We e-mail our drafts at least two full days in advance, but occasionally we bring copies of “side dishes” to the meeting itself. Having a scheduled meeting provided me with a deadline. Also, it became an obligation to my friends that I did not take lightly. Month by month, I brought my chapters to my writing group in part because I knew that they were expecting them. I could let myself down, but not my Village People.

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