This is a conversation with Shui-yin Sharon Yam (her 2nd time on the podcast) largely around a paper that she wrote called “Complicating Acts of Advocacy: Tactics in the Birthing Room“. This is episode 95 of The Fire These Times podcast.

She is Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, and a faculty affiliate of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Center for Equality and Social Justice at the University of Kentucky. She is one of the series editors for the Ohio State University Press’s New Directions in Rhetoric and Materiality.

Topics Discussed:

• Rhetorical Analysis, Reproductive Justice and Doulas: Intro to each and the links between them
• Three pillars of Reproductive Freedom and global implications
• Rhetoric of Health and Medicine: intro and explanation
• Technocratic model of birth: intro and explanation
• What makes some stories ‘untellable’?
• The pitfalls of the ‘self-made moms’ rhetoric
• Rhetoric and the antivaxx movement

Resources Mentioned:

• Romper’s Doula Diaries on YouTube
• “Rhetorical Appeals and Tactics in New York Times Comments About Vaccines: Qualitative Analysis”https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33275110/
• “Using Rhetorical Situations to Examine and Improve Vaccination Communication” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2021.697383/full#h4
• Vaccine Rhetorics https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814214336.html

Recommended Books:

• Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth by Dána-Ain Davis
• We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain
• Trans Medicine: The Emergence and Practice of Treating Gender by Stef M. Shuster

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From The Periphery

TFTT is a proud member of ⁠From The Periphery Media Collective. Check out other projects: Politically Depressed⁠ | Syria: The Inconvenient Revolution | From The Periphery Podcast | The Mutual Aid Podcast⁠