"He Was a Twin": The Emotional & Political Life of Black Motherhood in Times of Reproductive Injustice Wednesday, Oct. 14th @ 5pm Please register here. A zoom link will be provided after you register. https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcpdOGqrT4sH9Jut5qIkV1eOESNPU6u7X9c Presenter: Jallicia Jolly is a writer, post-doctoral fellow and incoming Assistant Professor in American Studies and Black Studies at Amherst College. Dr. Jolly researchers and teaches at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and Black women's health and activism, HIV/AIDS and intersectionality, transnational feminist organizing, and reproductive coercion and (in)justice in the African Diaspora. She is working on her first book manuscript, Ill Erotics: Black Caribbean Women and Self-Making in the Time of HIV/AIDS, an ethnographic and oral history study of the erotic lives and grassroots mobilization of young Black Jamaican women living and loving with HIV/AIDS. A Fulbright Scholar, Mellon Mays Fellow, NWSA Grad Student Scholarship Winner, and Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellow at Yale University, Dr. Jolly's work and commentary has been featured on the Huffington Post, Ms. Magazine, Michigan Radio, Rewire News, & University of Michigan's National Center of Institutional Diversity and LSA Today Magazine. Respondents: Loretta Ross, co-founder of the reproductive justice framework and Visiting Associate Professor of the Study of Women & Gender, Smith College Jennifer Hamilton, Visiting Professor of Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College Marisa Pizii, Deputy Director of Programs, Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program (CLPP) This presentation explores how young HIV-positive cisgender Black women in Jamaica redefine motherhood through sacred bonds with their children (living and dead) and their peers in the face of quotidian violence, grief, loss, and illness. Using ethnographic and life history interviews, I argue that the affective, psychic, and material costs of maternal labor that working-class Black mothers are called to do highlights the broader cultural, institutional, and political constraints that shape Black women's embodied experiences of sexuality, maternity, and reproduction. Essential to HIV-positive women's radical grassroots politics of care are Mentor- Mentee mom networks, related kinds of “other mothering,” and an embrace of “illicit mothering” through its ongoing negotiation of disclosure, breastfeeding and reproductive choices, and mothering in the face of inequality and violence. Yet, while motherhood makes Black women legible as political subjects amplifying legitimate demands, this vector of visibility can also heighten the exclusion of black maternal labor as it silences their everyday pain and prolonged grief. This presentation is part of a lengthy black feminist tradition that has contested the state scrutiny and bipolitical surveillance of Black mothers and is part of a burgeoning tradition examining the compounded impacts of racialized gendered violence and reproductive coercion on Black women's health and well-being. In accordance with the Certificate’s Statement of Solidary with Black Lives Matter, the Reproductive Politics Faculty Seminars offered during this academic year aim to lift up the work and voices of Black academics and activists who are addressing issues of reproductive justice, systemic racism, and white supremacy. If you are interested in giving a talk for the Five College Reproductive Politics Faculty Seminar in the Spring 2021 or AY 2021-22, please let us know. This is great opportunities to gather feedback on your research and meet colleagues from across the Five Colleges with an interest in reproductive politics, broadly defined. The talks can be hosted at any of the Five Colleges. .