Midwives to Fugitive Physicians: a longue durée approach to reproductive care in North America, 1500-2024

In the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, Wesley Hogan and her team interviewed over 40 physicians. Their stories on limits to the evidence-based care they can provide, post-Roe, led her to ask what layers of very long-term and shorter-term historic trends together led to this particular moment? Looking at North America over Braudel's longue durée, what reproductive epistemologies and knowledge economies become visible? The titular paper is an early stage preview of a longer project historicizing the epistemologies of reproductive care providers among descendants of Indigenous-, West African-, and European-descended people in North America. Dr. Wesley Hogan is a Research Professor at both the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute and the Department of History at Duke. She was recently awarded an NEH grant for her work with the SNCC Digital Gateway project. The reading material for this event may be requested from the History Colloquium Committee (email to: psigal@duke.edu). In-person attendance is encouraged, but participation via zoom is also welcome at: bit.ly/HoganZoom. Lunch will be available at 11:30am.