Dr Carleigh Morgan

I am interested in exploring the aesthetics and politics of reproduction in contemporary visual culture and film. Beyond legal or biological notions of reproduction, reproduction and its representations index complex and often contradictory attitudes towards reproductive justice, bodily sovereignty, and individual freedom. On both a personal and professional level, my work is motivated by some of the following questions: How does gestational labour intersect with the naturalisation of reproduction and discourses around pregnant embodiment? How does the womb act as site of mediation onscreen and challenge or complicate our understanding of biopolitics in an era of globalisation, mass migration, and climate emergency? Is reproductive emancipation antithetical to reproductive refusal? How we can abolish the misogynist medical protocols and paternalistic clinical language around elective sterilisation? How do neoliberal articulations of reproduction frame personal freedom within a matrix of proprietary relations to one’s own body? How can we visualise and then dismantle these constrictive ideologies, which are best summarised by the mantra ‘my body, my property’? How do we ensure that anti-racism, disability justice, and a disavowal of biological essentialism are at the heart of our collective project to establish new horizons for reproductive and non-reproductive possibility?