Reproducing Wenches: Histories and Futures of Intersectional Disadvantage (2023-04-05)

Abstract

The 2023 Jankofsky Lecture in honor of Dr. Klaus P. Jankofsky featuring Dr. Carissa M. Harris; Carissa M. Harris is Associate Professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality in late medieval England and Scotland, with a special interest in connections between past and present sexual cultures and ideas about gender. She is the author of Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval Britain (2018) and the co-editor, with Sarah Baechle and Elizaveta Strakhov, of Rape Culture and Female Resistance in Lake Medieval Literature (2022). Dr. Harris takes a deep dive into the history of the word "wench" from a Black feminist perspective, focusing on how it became a degoratory term naming a woman who was young, single, socio-economically disadvantaged, and sexually available. Paying particular attention to "wench maternity," it frames its discussion through the lens of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, showing how the concepts embodied by the wench are central to the Supreme Court's decision, and it looks ahead to the potential futures that the medieval wench embodies.