Mother's Milk: Breastfeeding from Metaphor to Practice (Conference)

Friday, October 21, 2022 - All Day Event

Mother's Milk Online Conference Registration Link


Mother’s Milk: Breastfeeding from Metaphor to Practice
Fri., October 21 - Sun., October 23
University of New Hampshire and Online (ET)

CLICK HERE FOR CONFERENCE REGISTRATION

The conference is generously funded by the UNH Center for Humanities, the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Classics, Humanities and Italian Studies.


Friday, October 21

12:00-12:30 pm Opening Remarks (Zoom)

Harriet Fertik (Ohio State University) and Anna Wainwright (University of New Hampshire)


1:00-2:30 pm Milk as Substance and Symbol (Zoom)

Yujhán Claros (University of New Hampshire): “Quarts of Milk Like Marble Statues:” Theorizing African-American Female Bodies and an Aesthetics of Black Womanhood in Toni Morrison’s Fiction

Nicole Ruane (University of New Hampshire): Milk as a “Natural Symbol” of Matrilineality in an Enigmatic Biblical Law

Danielle Callegari (Dartmouth College): Mother's Milk: Nourishing Poets in Dante's Purgatorio

Paul Robertson (University of New Hampshire), Chair and Respondent


3:00-4:30 pm Breastfeeding and Enslavement in Transhistorical Context (Zoom)

Sasha Turner (Johns Hopkins University): Between Women: Breastfeeding, Social Connections, and Bonds of Trust

Gaia Gianni (Ohio State University): Enslaved Nurses and Coercive Allomaternal Feeding in Ancient Rome

Jennifer Stager (Johns Hopkins University): The Violence of Care: Women Enslaved as Wet Nurses in Ancient Greece

Harriet Fertik (Ohio State University), Chair

5:00pm Keynote (Zoom)

Stephanie Jones-Rogers (University of California, Berkeley):  “Wet Nurse For Sale or Hire:” White Women, Wet Nursing, and Enslaved Mothers’ Invisible Labor in the American Slave Market


Saturday, October 22

11am-12:30pm Nursing as Private, Nursing as Public: Italy, A Case Study (Zoom)

Shannon McHugh (University of Massachusetts Boston): Orpheus Lactans: Nursing in Renaissance Italian Lyric Poetry

Simona di Martino (University of Warwick): Quality Milk and Nursing Bodies in Luigi Pirandello’s Novelle per un anno

Diana Garvin (University of Oregon): Breastfeeding in Political Propaganda from Fascism to Neo-Fascism

Amy Boylan (University of New Hampshire), Chair and Respondent

1:00-3:00 pm Roundtable on Breastfeeding and Lactation Scholarship Across Disciplines: Retrospective and New Directions (Zoom)

Linda Blum (Northeastern University), author of At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States (2000)

Ifeyinwa Asiodu (University of California San Francisco), Principal Investigator of Motivating Interdisciplinary Lactation Knowledge (MILK) Research Lab

Courtney Jung (University of Toronto), author of Lactivism: How Feminists and Fundamentalists, Hippies and Yuppies, and Physicians and Politicians Made Breastfeeding Big Business and Bad Policy (2015)

Rachel Trubowitz (University of New Hampshire), author of Nation and Nurture in Seventeenth-Century English Literature (2012)

Jennifer Borda (University of New Hampshire), Chair

3:30-5:30 pm Building Supportive Communities for New Parents: A Workshop with Practitioners Around the Seacoast (Hybrid: UNH-Durham Campus and Livestream) 
Registration Required - Register Here

Alyssa O’Brien, Assistant Professor of Nursing, University of New Hampshire, Moderator

Stephanie Crawford, Propa City Community Outreach and Belle Joie Doula Services

Shilpa Darivemula, Aseemkala Initiative and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Ananda Lowe, Boston Doula Circle

Krista Maltais, Relief Parenting

Janet Perkins, Garrison Women’s Health Center and Wentworth-Douglass Hospital

Isha Parupudi, Aseemkala Initiative and Columbia University


Sunday, October 23

11am-12:30pm Milky Mothers: Pure and Impure (Zoom)

Christopher Richards (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University): The Virgin Mary Breastfeeds: Theorizing Materiality and Images

Samantha Katz Seal (University of New Hampshire): ​​“Yeve the Child to Sowke:” On (Not) Breastfeeding the Infant in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale

Angelica Pesarini (University of Toronto): Black Mothers, White Children: Expressions of Subaltern Identities in Fascist East Africa

Laure Barillas (University of New Hampshire), Chair and Respondent

12:30-1 pm Reflections (Zoom)

Harriet Fertik (Ohio State University) and Anna Wainwright (University of New Hampshire)

2-5 pm, Artist Conversation and Reception: Birthing Bodies/Birthing Art (Hybrid: UNH-Durham Campus and Livestream)
Registration Required - Register Here

Loudon Wainwright III (recording artist): “Rufus is a Tit Man” (recorded performance)

Tirtzah Bassel (School of Visual Arts in New York City and Chashama Workspace Program): Canon in Drag

Katie Umans (University of New Hampshire): Milk as Metaphor: A Look at Contemporary Poetry

Shilpa Darivemula and Isha Parupudi (Aseemkala Initiative): Exploring the Mythology Around Breastfeeding and Wet Nurses: A Dance-Discussion on Pūtanā

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Contact Info
Hartford, Lisa
603-862-2190