Demands for removal of Confederate monuments honoring Confederate leaders and the ensuing protests and acts of violence in Charlottesville, Virginia sparked a review of New York City’s “symbols of hate,” with the decision to remove one monument to Dr. J. Marion Sims on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. Sims is credited as the “father of American gynecology,” developing his techniques through experimental surgeries on enslaved women who simultaneously served as surgical nurses and domestic laborers in Sims household.
In a panel discussion, Deirdre Cooper Owens (author, Medical Bondage), Daina Ramey Berry (author, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh), Michael Blakey (Director of Science, The New York African Burial Ground Project), Ana Edwards (Chair, Sacred Ground Reclamation Project) and discussant Jennifer Morgan (author Laboring Women) will draw critical connections between contemporary reproductive and health justice, the histories and legacies of slavery and how marked and unmarked memorial landscapes signify the political economies of these dynamic and contested relationships. Organized and hosted by Autumn Rain Barrett, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
Co-sponsored by Africana Studies, Met Studies, American Studies, SCA, NYC CSGS, IPK, History Dept, Institute for Historical Biology, College of William & Mary