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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter July 11, 2012

Women's Reproductive Rights: A literary perspective

  • Valentina Adami,

    Valentina Adami holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona. She is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona and at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism. She has published various essays and two monographs: Trauma Studies and Literature: Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow as Trauma Fiction (Peter Lang, 2008) and Bioethics Through Literature: Margaret Atwood’s Cautionary Tales (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011).

From the journal Pólemos

Abstract

This paper examines the development of the concept of women’s reproductive rights in human rights treaties and conventions since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, revealing how traditional human rights formulations are often male-centered and lack a gender-sensitive approach. Since feminist speculative fiction has anticipated many of the reproductive rights issues that we are facing today, the author claims that literary texts such as Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), P. D. James’s The Children of Men (1992) and Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (2007) can enlighten contemporary debates on reproductive rights and contribute to the development of a universal ethics of human rights that takes into account the specificity of women’s rights.

About the author

Ph.D. Valentina Adami,

Valentina Adami holds a PhD in English Studies from the University of Verona. She is Adjunct Professor of English language at the University of Verona and at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, and member of AIDEL (Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura), AIA (Associazione Italiana di Anglistica) and ESSE (European Society for the Study of English). Her fields of research are trauma studies; law, language and literature; bioethics, medicine and literature; ecolinguistics and ecocriticism. She has published various essays and two monographs: Trauma Studies and Literature: Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow as Trauma Fiction (Peter Lang, 2008) and Bioethics Through Literature: Margaret Atwood’s Cautionary Tales (Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011).

Published Online: 2012-07-11
Published in Print: 2012-07-19

©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

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