In the wake of many examples of devastating global politics, Alyssa Velazquez’s lecture that delves into the great illusion of reproductive choice feels more relevant than ever…
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Paula White, televangelist of the “prosperity gospel” and spiritual advisor to President Tr**p delivered a sermon on January 5, 2020, commanding “all Satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now.” Despite his anti-choice stance, White prayed for miscarriages in ‘Satanic wombs’, hoping they’d be unable to carry forth plans of destruction or harm. A modern day curse cloaked under right-wing conservatism. The Witcher, Netflix’s most popular debut series, conjures up very real attitudes on motherhood and childbirth. Yennefer, a sorceress from Vengerberg, is unable to conceive; her ascension to become a magical immortal incurred a cost: her womb.
In ‘Spawn: The Fantasy of Women's Right to Choose’ Alyssa Velazquez analyses reproduction justice, eugenics, and population growth through fictional contexts such as The Witcher, George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, Fledging by Octavia Butler, and their cinematic adaptations. Velazquez compares this with research into the history of science’s earliest conceptions of menstruation and pregnancy in relation to birthing bodies and attitudes towards reproduction.
The current national emergency and news coverage on who gets to be pregnant, when, and how, is a universal concern that's been shared by witches, vampires, and demons for centuries. Their reproductive potential is not the exception, but the rule, born from humanity’s historical and contemporaneous gender-biased, race-conscious, and class-based paradoxical repulsion and fascination with female anatomy and birth.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Alyssa Velazquez (she/her) is a Puerto Rican American born and raised along the edges of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. She’s a cultural historian, playwright, actress, and writer. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Material Intelligence, The Tower, S/He Speaks 2: Voices of Women & Trans Folx, Scraps, The Establishment, AutoStraddle, GRLSQUASH, and Women’s History Magazine. Velazquez is an inaugural fellow of Critical Insight through the American Theatre magazine and a 2024 Lambda Literary fellow. Past residences include a Bischoff Inn Micro-Residency, a writer in residence at City Books, Pittsburgh’s oldest bookstore and a Freshworks Resident at Kelly Strayhorn Theater.
INSTAGRAM: @velazquezalyssa
WEBSITE: www.velazquezalyssa.com
SPRING TERM 2025
Monday 20th January
Margot Mifflin (she/her)
Beauty Pageants and National Identity
Monday 27th January
Verity Babbs (she/her)
Divergent Minds: Female Neurodiversity in Art and Art History
Monday 3rd February
Vex Ashley (she/her)
The Body And The Screen - Sexuality Against The Machine
Monday 10th February
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Holy Hags: Sinners and Sheela Na Gigs - RECORDING ONLY
Monday 17th February
Dr. Kimberley Baltzer-Jaray (she/they)
Women Who Kill: Gender Bias And Murder
Monday 24th February
Alekszandra Rokvity (she/her)
Endometriosis: A Feminist Issue
Monday 3rd March
TBC
Monday 10th March
Jennifer Anyan (she/her)
The Madonna Whore Dichotomy: Motherhood And Sexual Agency
Monday 17th March
Alyssa Velazquez (she/her)
Spawn: The Fantasy Of Women's Right To Choose
Monday 24th March
Leanne Yau (she/they)
Radical Connection Through Relationship Anarchy
Monday 31st March
Dr. Noam Yadin Evron (she/her)
Abortions: A Complicated History From The Middle Ages To Today
Monday 7th April
Lucy Cooke (she/her)
Bitch: On The Female Of The Species
Monday 14th April
Anna Souter (she/her)
Plant Parenthood: A Potted History Of Vegetal Reproduction And (M)Otherhood
Monday 21st April
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Feminism And The Ice Age - RECORDING ONLY
Monday 28th April
Elora Shehabuddin (she/her)
Feminism And Islam: A History Of Muslim Feminism
RECORDING
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