The Rhetoric of Pregnancy

The Rhetoric of Pregnancy PDF Author: Marika Seigel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022607207X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
It is a truth widely acknowledged that if you’re pregnant and can afford one, you’re going to pick up a pregnancy manual. From What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Pregnancy for Dummies, these guides act as portable mentors for women who want advice on how to navigate each stage of pregnancy. Yet few women consider the effect of these manuals—how they propel their readers into a particular system of care or whether the manual they choose reflects or contradicts current medical thinking. Using a sophisticated rhetorical analysis, Marika Seigel works to deconstruct pregnancy manuals while also identifying ways to improve communication about pregnancy and healthcare. She traces the manuals’ evolution from early twentieth-century tomes that instructed readers to unquestioningly turn their pregnancy management over to doctors, to those of the women’s health movement that encouraged readers to engage more critically with their care, to modern online sources that sometimes serve commercial interests as much as the mother’s. The first book-length study of its kind, The Rhetoric of Pregnancy is a must-read for both users and designers of our prenatal systems—doctors and doulas, scholars and activists, and anyone interested in encouraging active, effective engagement.

The Rhetoric of Pregnancy

The Rhetoric of Pregnancy PDF Author: Marika Seigel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022607207X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book

Book Description
It is a truth widely acknowledged that if you’re pregnant and can afford one, you’re going to pick up a pregnancy manual. From What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Pregnancy for Dummies, these guides act as portable mentors for women who want advice on how to navigate each stage of pregnancy. Yet few women consider the effect of these manuals—how they propel their readers into a particular system of care or whether the manual they choose reflects or contradicts current medical thinking. Using a sophisticated rhetorical analysis, Marika Seigel works to deconstruct pregnancy manuals while also identifying ways to improve communication about pregnancy and healthcare. She traces the manuals’ evolution from early twentieth-century tomes that instructed readers to unquestioningly turn their pregnancy management over to doctors, to those of the women’s health movement that encouraged readers to engage more critically with their care, to modern online sources that sometimes serve commercial interests as much as the mother’s. The first book-length study of its kind, The Rhetoric of Pregnancy is a must-read for both users and designers of our prenatal systems—doctors and doulas, scholars and activists, and anyone interested in encouraging active, effective engagement.

The Rhetoric and Medicalization of Pregnancy and Childbirth in Horror Films

The Rhetoric and Medicalization of Pregnancy and Childbirth in Horror Films PDF Author: Courtney Patrick-Weber
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1793602816
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 103

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Book Description
In The Rhetoric and Medicalization of Pregnancy and Childbirth in Horror Films, Courtney Patrick-Weber argues that the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth traumatizes pregnant people in a number of ways, even as many people believe the shift toward medicalization has improved conditions for pregnant people. Patrick-Weber analyzes a selection of horror films, including The Void and Black Christmas, to demonstrate not only evidence of this trauma on a visceral level, but also how horror films can reflect and contribute to cultural conversations surrounding pregnancy and childbirth. While horror films are often neglected as vital sources of intellect and analysis, many of these films use their subversive viewpoints on cultural issues to offer a unique perspective that can ultimately help to shape the way society views them. Patrick-Weber reminds us that pregnancy and childbirth can be traumatic events, both physically and emotionally, as she discusses the current conversations surrounding the issue and critiques the “advancement” of medicalization. Scholars of film studies, gender studies, rhetoric, and medicine may find this book particularly useful.

Expecting

Expecting PDF Author: Marika Seigel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022615338X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
As long as there have been pregnancies, there have been suggestions for how best to bring a child into the world: from tips for homeopathic care and natural childbirth to the circulation of old wives’ tales, those who deliver advice to pregnant women are often influenced as much by their own agendas as what is best, or most comfortable, for a new mother. In Expecting, Marika Seigel, author of The Rhetoric of Pregnancy, provides a list of recommended reading and considers the history of pregnancy advice. Opening with her own birthing histories and careful explanation of how she first became interested in the topic, Seigel then casts a skeptical eye over the pregnancy guides that have circulated from the Enlightenment to the present day. Encouraging women to remain empowered when they are pregnant and to collaborate with their health care providers, Seigel articulates how best to have a healthy and affirming birth experience.

The Political Geographies of Pregnancy

The Political Geographies of Pregnancy PDF Author: Laura R. Woliver
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252075978
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
As reproductive power finds its way into the hands of medical professionals, lobbyists, and policymakers, the geographies of pregnancy are shifting, and the boundaries need to be redrawn, argues Laura R. Woliver. Across a politically charged backdrop of reproductive issues, Woliver exposes strategies that claim to uphold the best interests of children, families, and women but in reality complicate women's struggles to have control over their own bodies. Utilizing feminist standpoint theory and promoting a feminist ethic of care, Woliver looks at the ways modern reproductive politics are shaped by long-standing debates on abortion and adoption, surrogacy arrangements, new reproductive technologies, medical surveillance, and the mapping of the human genome.

Sign of Pathology

Sign of Pathology PDF Author: Nathan Stormer
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271066881
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Much of the political polarization that grips the United States is rooted in the so-called culture wars, and no topic defines this conflict better than the often contentious and sometimes violent debate over abortion rights. In Sign of Pathology, Nathan Stormer reframes our understanding of this conflict by examining the medical literature on abortion from the 1800s to the 1960s. Often framed as an argument over a right to choose versus a right to life, our current understanding of this conflict is as a contest over who has the better position on reproductive biology. Against this view, Sign of Pathology argues that, as it became a medical problem, abortion also became a template, more generally, for struggling with how to live—far exceeding discussions of the merits of providing abortions or how to care for patients. Abortion practices (and all the legal, moral, and ideological entanglements thereof) have rested firmly at the center of debate over many fundamental institutions and concepts—namely, the individual, the family, the state, human rights, and, indeed, the human. Medical rhetoric, then, was decisive in cultivating abortion as a mode of cultural critique, even weaponizing it for discursive conflict on these important subjects, although the goal of the medical practice of abortion has never been to establish this kind of struggle. Stormer argues that the medical discourse of abortion physicians transformed the state of abortion into an indicator that the culture was ill, attacking itself during and through pregnancy in a wrongheaded attempt to cope with reproduction.

MTV and Teen Pregnancy

MTV and Teen Pregnancy PDF Author: Letizia Guglielmo
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810891700
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
In MTV and Teen Pregnancy: Critical Essays on 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, contributors from a variety of backgrounds and expertise offer potent essays about the MTV programs 16 and Pregnant, Teen Mom, and Teen Mom 2. Divided into four parts, each section tackles the controversial representation of teen pregnancy from a different discipline. Part One explores gendered social norms and the shows’ representations of teenage motherhood. Part Two prompts readers to consider the intersections of race, class, gender, and the social and cultural power structures often glossed over in these programs. Part Three turns its attention to teenage fathers, and Part Four draws from TVs representations of reality to discuss the impact these shows may have on the viewing audience. As the debates about these shows continue, this collection provides a valuable critical discourse to be used both inside and outside the classroom.

Writing Maternity

Writing Maternity PDF Author: Dara Rossman Regaignon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814257890
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Traces the rhetorical origins of maternal anxiety in Victorian literature, bringing uptake and genre ecology into literary studies.

Dubious Conceptions

Dubious Conceptions PDF Author: Kristin Luker
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674217034
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Traces the way popular attitudes came to demonize young mothers and examines the profound social and economic changes that have influenced debate on the issue, especially since the 1970s. --From publisher description.

Writing Childbirth

Writing Childbirth PDF Author: Kim Hensley Owens
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334062
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Women seeking to express concerns about childbirth or to challenge institutionalized medicine by writing online birth plans or birth stories exercise rhetorical agency in undeniably feminist ways. In Writing Childbirth: Women’s Rhetorical Agency in Labor and Online, author Kim Hensley Owens explores how women create and use everyday rhetorics in planning for, experiencing, and writing about childbirth. Drawing on medical texts, popular advice books, and online birth plans and birth stories, as well as the results of a childbirth writing survey, Owens considers how women’s agency in childbirth is sanctioned, and how it is not. She examines how women’s rhetorical choices in writing interact with institutionalized medicine and societal norms. Writing Childbirth reveals the contradictory messages women receive about childbirth, their conflicting expectations about it, and how writing and technology contribute to and reconcile these messages and expectations. Demonstrating the value of extending rhetorical investigations of health and medicine beyond patient-physician interactions and the discourse of physicians, Writing Childbirth offers fresh insight into feminist rhetorical agency and technology and expands our understanding of the rhetorics of health and medicine.

Rhetorics of Motherhood

Rhetorics of Motherhood PDF Author: Lindal Buchanan
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809332213
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Becoming a mother profoundly alters one’s perception of the world, as Lindal Buchanan learned firsthand when she gave birth. Suddenly attentive to representations of mothers and mothering in advertisements, fiction, film, art, education, and politics, she became intrigued by the persuasive force of the concept of motherhood, an interest that unleashed a host of questions: How is the construct defined? How are maternal appeals crafted, presented, and performed? What do they communicate about gender and power? How do they affect women? Her quest for answers has produced Rhetorics of Motherhood, the first book-length consideration of the topic through a feminist rhetorical lens. Although both male and female rhetors employ motherhood to promote themselves and their agendas, Buchanan argues it is particularly slippery terrain for women—on the one hand, affording them authority and credibility but, on the other, positioning them disadvantageously within the gendered status quo. Rhetorics of Motherhood investigates that paradox by detailing the cultural construction and performance of the Mother in American public discourse, tracing its use and impact in three case studies, and by theorizing how, when, and why maternal discourses work to women’s benefit or detriment. In the process, the reader encounters a fascinating array of issues—including birth control, civil rights, and abortion—and rhetors, ranging from Diane Nash and Margaret Sanger to Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama. As Buchanan makes clear, motherhood is a rich site for investigating the interrelationships among gender, power, and public discourse. Her latest book contributes to the discipline of rhetoric by attending to and making a convincing case for the significance of this understudied subject. With its examination of timely controversies, contemporary and historical figures, and powerful women, Rhetorics of Motherhood will appeal to a wide array of readers in rhetoric, communications, American studies, women’s studies, and beyond.