SWAGS 300: Ideas and Methods

Research Proposal
Ash Smith

In what ways does the American government encourage regulation that manipulates black
reproduction? How has it been able to establish and maintain a system of disproportionate
control over black womens reproduction? What is the role of the American economy in the
creation of social rhetoric and policy surrounding black womens reproduction?
I plan on using a method of analysis which centers political economy (expansion,
contraction, depression) and the economic stages (agricultural, industrial, maybe technological)
to link the state of the economy and the construction of social rhetoric as it relates to black
womens reproduction. I hope to track the ways that America has manipulated black womens
reproduction for profit AND how its economy which in a capitalist society has an almost
overwhelming ability to influence public life and opinions on a national scale when healthy or not
has impacted time-specific beliefs and policies surrounding reproduction. Framed in this way,
the analysis can provide a better understanding of why and how black women and their
reproduction are at risk of being or are being exploited today.
This question is significant because black womens reproductive capacities have been
integral to the development and maintenance of capitalism in the early life of the United States,
and in my short academic career, I havent encountered many texts that observe how their
reproduction has been viewed and policed after slavery, read with a focus on the economy.
Scholarship concerning black womens reproduction in America exists. Patricia Hill
Collins, bell hooks, and Angela Davis are all women who have centered this topic in their
analyses of black women in American society. Ive read feminist theorists deconstruct the black
American womans reproductive timeline historically, socially, and even economically at some
points, but the overwhelming majority of scholarship is primarily focused on the social and
historical evolution of their reproduction in America. Where my research topic veers from
common discourse I think is through its usage of social and historical explanation to chart the
evolution of reproduction and policy but also its primary focus on how economics influences
deeply the social and historical outcomes. I dont believe that capitalism, having played such a
large role in black womens reproductive lives during slavery, ceased to be influential just
because they were freed, and Im interested in exploring its ongoing impact.
This paper is primarily going to be historical and less theoretical. Ill be looking at
concrete realities economic trends, historical events but also inconsistent types of
information public opinion in order to make convincing and hopefully accurate connections
between the social, political, and economic. I dont see this being collaborative, unless I can

locate a black American woman who has experienced state sanctioned reproductive violations
who would be willing to share, so my focus will mostly be on analyzing academic documents
and first hand accounts. I plan to do archival research, data analysis and application, research
on the research of other black feminist scholars etc.
Im centering a population and an issue that are mostly overlooked, through a lens that
not many people have explored. My work is primarily driven and defined by my desire to analyze
the historical development of black american womens reproductive experiences in a way thats
ethically grounded in respect and care. I understand that I have to be acutely aware of my
positioning and experiential distance from this topic and defer to and approach delicately the
studies and accounts of women who have experienced such atrocities.