Reveals the contradictory messages women receive about childbirth, their conflicting expectations about it and how writing and technology contribute to and reconcile these messages and expectations. Original.
Feminist rhetorician Owens analyzes women's online birth narratives, birth plans, and survey responses in order to locate women's rhetorical agency in the narratives. She covers writing birth: asserting rhetorical agency; understanding birth: commonplaces of modern American childbirth advice; inventing birth: rhetorics of control and resistance; confronting birth: rhetorical disability and five women's birth plans; hosting birth: birth and birth stories over time and online; sharing birth: catharsis, commentary, and testimonial in online birth stories; and experiencing birth. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Women seeking to express concerns about childbirth or to challenge institutionalized medicine by writing online birth plans or birth stories exercise rhetorical agency in undeniably feminist ways. InWriting Childbirth: Womens Rhetorical Agency in Labor and Online, author Kim Hensley Owens explores how women create and use everyday rhetorics in planning for, experiencing, and writing about childbirth.
Drawing on medical texts, popular advice books, and online birth plans and birth stories, as well as the results of a childbirth writing survey, Owens considers how womens agency in childbirth is sanctioned, and how it is not. She examines how womens rhetorical choices in writing interact with institutionalized medicine and societal norms. Writing Childbirth reveals the contradictory messages women receive about childbirth, their conflicting expectations about it, and how writing and technology contribute to and reconcile these messages and expectations.
Demonstrating the value of extending rhetorical investigations of health and medicine beyond patient-physician interactions and the discourse of physicians,Writing Childbirth offers fresh insight into feminist rhetorical agency and technology and expands our understanding of the rhetorics of health and medicine.
| Preface |
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ix | |
| Acknowledgments |
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xiii | |
| Introduction: Writing Birth---Asserting Rhetorical Agency |
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1 | (17) |
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Chapter One Understanding Birth: Commonplaces of Modern American Childbirth Advice |
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18 | (21) |
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Chapter Two Inventing Birth: Rhetorics of Control and Resistance |
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39 | (28) |
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Chapter Three Confronting Birth: Rhetorical Disability and Five Women's Birth Plans |
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67 | (23) |
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Chapter Four Hosting Birth: Birth and Birth Stories over Time and Online |
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90 | (24) |
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Chapter Five Sharing Birth: Catharsis, Commentary, and Testimonial in Online Birth Stories |
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114 | (51) |
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Epilogue: Experiencing Birth |
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137 | (28) |
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A Survey Recruitment Email |
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165 | (2) |
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B Childbirth Writing Survey |
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167 | (4) |
| Notes |
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171 | (12) |
| Works Cited |
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183 | (14) |
| Index |
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197 | |
Kim Hensley Owens is an associate professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Rhode Island. Her research focuses on the intersections of rhetoric, feminism, science and health, and ethnography. She has published essays in Rhetoric Review, Computers and Composition, JAC, and Enculturation.
