“No One’s Property: A Writers’ Roundtable on Bodily Autonomy, Reproductive Rights, and Evangelicalism”

Abstract: In her 2015 article “Evangelical Purity Culture Is Not about Sex–It’s about Power,” researcher and scholar Sara Moslener writes, "I’m a big believer that most academics are really writing their own stories. The more authentic we are with those stories, the more people connect to the histories we are trying to uncover." Like Moslener, creative writers Cait West, Dawn Burns, Bex Miller, and Bree Strayer find the same to be true of their creative work, be it memoir, fiction, or poetry. 

We are focusing our pieces around bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, each of us writing from a background steeped in evangelicalism and Christian patriarchy, using this experience to understand our current culture after the overthrow of Roe v. Wade. As a roundtable, we will be pairing individual readings with discussion around how our writing is informed by our religious upbringings and experiences and how this creative work is an act of taking back the narrative in a world where women have lost or are at risk of losing their autonomy.

Find more information about this conference on the PCA website.