-- With apologies for cross-posting --

CALL FOR PAPERS - Reproducing Expectations? Personal Narratives and Public Discourses of Reproduction

Proposed Panel at the BSA Annual Conference
4-6 April 2017, University of Manchester
Organisers: Zeynep Gurtin (University of Cambridge) and Charlotte Faircloth (University of Roehampton)

Deadline for submissions is *11 October 2016*

Panel Theme: Reproducing Expectations? Personal Narratives and Public Discourses of Reproduction

Building on our recent work, which seeks to create a dialogue between scholars of assisted reproductive technologies and parenting culture studies, this panel will bring together reproduction scholars working on a range of topics from reproductive technologies and LGBT studies, to intimacy and parenting. In line with the conference theme, we seek to explore the fissures between the public discourses and personal experiences of reproduction, pregnancy and parenting in the 21st Century. We hope for a mix of papers interrogating the various ways in which expectations and anxieties are created as men and women progress along their reproductive journeys, particularly where these journeys involve medical and technological interactions. We are interested in work that questions the role of assumptions and expectations; details decision-making processes; interrogates reproductive stratifications and inequalities; explores pioneering reproductive undertakings; engages with the concepts of anxiety, individualization, or solidarity in reproduction and parenting; and examines the role of hope, disappointment, and ambivalence in reproductive narratives. We welcome both qualitative and quantitative research papers focusing on any part of the reproduction and parenting process, and encourage papers to speak to the personal as well as the public, or to link both.

We are seeking to submit a double panel of 6 papers on experiences of reproduction and parenting to fall within the Medicine, Health and Illness stream at the BSA Annual conference. 

Oral presentations will be allocated 20 minutes (15 minute presentation and 5 minute questions).

We intend in due course to publish papers from this panel (subject to review processes) as a journal special issue, so we particularly encourage papers based on original research which can be prepared for publication in the 4 months following the conference.

If interested, please complete and return the abstract submission form attached to [log in to unmask] by **11 October 2016**. Accepted papers will be notified by noon on 13 October 2016. (If your paper is not accepted for our panel, you can still submit an abstract directly to the BSA.)

The BSA Annual Conference theme for 2017 is Recovering the Social: Personal Troubles and Public Issues.
For more information about the conference, please visit:
https://www.britsoc.co.uk/events/key-bsa-events/bsa-annual-conference


-- 
Dr Zeynep B. Gürtin

Visiting Researcher, Centre for Family Research
and Affiliated Lecturer, Department of Sociology
University of Cambridge
Free School Lane
Cambridge CB2 3RF

Tel: (+44) 07967 308989