Jane Collective (2020)

In January 2020, I taught a course entitled “Performing Reproductive Politics” at Middlebury College. As in typical courses, students read a range of academic texts about reproductive justice. Unlike typical courses, the class culminated in a theatrical production of Jane: Abortion and the Underground. The play, a docudrama written by Paula Kamen, tells the remarkable story of the Jane Collective, a group of housewives and college students who performed approximately 11,000 illegal abortions during the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

Through putting on a play, and hosting talk-backs after our sold out shows, students practiced moving our academic conversations beyond the classroom, translating feminist and queer studies work into an alternative medium, and putting academic scholarship to work in the service of abortion justice. The class was largely made up of students who had no prior experience with theater nor had taken prior Gender Studies courses. This composition of students was one of the strengths of the class, and speaks to possibilities for using creative modalities to invite people into engaging with feminist thought and action.