| dc.description.abstract | My dissertation addresses the intellectual, material, and social problem of how we deal with a new landscape of fertility health that is populated with new, technological possibilities. In particular, I focus on how women and men interact with fertility-based technologies, as well as with the companies that produce these devices and the professional experts they employ. Through attention to interactions with reproductive technologies that mostly live in consumer homes and online, I consider three questions 1) How is fertility health marketed and understood in these digital spaces? 2) How do both company and consumer practices reify old conceptions of reproduction as a “woman’s duty” and obligation, instead of one shared by male partners? And finally, 3) what are the ways in which this gendered responsibility is racialized as a distinctly “white woman’s duty,” thereby reproducing disparities in reproductive medicine and fertility care? Through an exploration at the intersection of medicine, technology, and surveillance, my work considers how gendered, racialized logics of “a white woman’s duty” are reproduced and legitimized through the emerging landscape of consumer-driven fertility technology. | |
