WGSS Brown Bag - Staging the Limitations of Medical Knowledge in Sidney Kingsley's Men in White

Staging the Limitations of Medical Knowledge in Sidney Kingsley's Men in White Jena DiMaggio, Postdoctoral Fellow | Literary and Cultural Studies, Department of English What do we mean when we say that abortion is healthcare? Reproductive rights advocates often herald this kind of language as an alternative to the more commonly critiqued narratives of choice, but what assumptions about healthcare undergird such a claim? This presentation will offer a critical analysis of Sidney Kingsley's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1937 play, Men in White, to argue that abortion-as-healthcare rhetoric elides a long history of medical institutions actively constraining both abortion practices as well as its cultural meanings. Bio: Jena DiMaggio is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Literary and Cultural Studies and a 2026-2027 Taft Counter Fellow at UC. Their work investigates how abortion is narrated in American literature and culture; their first book project, Beyond Choice: Narrating Abortion Before Roe, read 20th-century literary texts through theories of assemblage to generate alternative discursive and epistemological parardigms. Hosted by: College of Arts & Sciences Additional Information can be found at: