At a time when conservative politicians are impeding access to safe abortions under the pretext of a COVID-19 response, this Feminist Studies issue focuses on abortion and women’s embodiment. Three essays reflect on histories of movements for abortion access, specifically analyzing their affective strategies and proposing new directions (Melissa Oliver-Powell, Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst, and Jennifer L. Holland). Two collaborative essays dissect the labor process of feminist academic production, centering the role of the body (María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos, and Laura Bisaillon et al). Nathan Snaza reviews four recent books that move beyond humanistic understandings of affect and the body. Poems by Rosetta Marantz Cohen, Darlene Taylor, and Abby Minor feature experiences of bodily violence and bodily pleasure, while Ellyn Weiss discusses the distinctive representations of bodies in the visual art of Swedish-American artist Anna U. Davis. To close the issue, two News and Views pieces by Pang Laikwan and Sealing Cheng on the protest movement in Hong Kong provide complementary perspectives on living through political tumult. Our next issue will include content directly focused on the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Melissa Oliver-Powell
Beyond the Spectacle of Suffering: Agnès Varda’s L’Une chante, l’autre pas and Rewriting the Subject of Abortion in France
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Rachel Alpha Johnston Hurst
Abortion as a Feminist Pedagogy of Grief in Marianne Apostolides’s Deep Salt Water
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Jennifer L. Holland
“Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust”:
Children and Young Adults in the Anti-Abortion Movement Order this article (pdf)

Ellyn Weiss
Anna U. Davis: An Introduction (Art Essay)
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Laura Bisaillon, Alana Cattapan, Annelieke Driessen, Esther van Duin, Shannon Spruit, Lorena Anton, and Nancy S. Jecker
Doing Academia Differently: “I Needed Self-Help Less Than I Needed a Fair Society”
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María Fernanda Olarte-Sierra and Tania Pérez-Bustos
Careful Speculations: Toward a Caring Science of Forensic Genetics in Colombia
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Nathan Snaza
Biopolitics without Bodies: Feminism and the Feeling of Life (Review Essay)
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Pang Laikwan
Identity Politics and Democracy in Hong Kong’s Social Unrest (News and Views)
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Sealing Cheng
Pikachu’s Tears: Children’s Perspectives on Violence in Hong Kong (News and Views)
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Creative Writing
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Abby Minor
Jump Rope Chant: A Cure for All Kinds of Stomach Aches, ca. 2000 Bce – ca. 2000 Ce (Poetry)

Rosetta Marantz Cohen
There Were Six of Us at Dinner (Poetry)

Darlene Taylor
Blood on a Blackberry (Poetry)