Dissertation
Spectacular surveillance: gender, white Christian nationalism, and Evangelical women in the pro-life movement
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.007131
Abstract
This project explores Evangelical white women’s role within conservative social movements; I marshal a rhetorical reproductive justice lens to interrogate their participation in the pro-life movement in particular with specific attention to their deep-rooted racist beliefs and actions that have consequences for everyday reproductive healthcare. Within this dissertation, I dig deep into the history, lived experiences, and performances of white women’s involvement in conservative movements within the United States, focusing on the impact on contemporary reproductive politics. In interrogating these performances, I coin the term “spectacular surveillance,” which is a type of biopolitical surveillance that relies on emotion, femininity, and spectacular visuals to create a purposeful blockade of certain bodies and their access to healthcare, through rhetorics of shame, racism, and nationhood. Using the example of the pro-life movement specifically allows a small look into a larger problem surrounding conservative women’s emotionality, whiteness, and the consequences of the “invisible” activism of women in these movements for the nation itself and on the biopolitical sphere of the United States. Analyzing a rhetorical, ethnographic archive of white women’s Evangelical activism through this broader lens of reproductive justice conveys the historical stakes of the pro-life movement and contextualizes the spectacular surveillance of reproductive politics and bodies in the Unites States.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Spectacular surveillance: gender, white Christian nationalism, and Evangelical women in the pro-life movement
- Creators
- Micki Burdick
- Contributors
- Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Advisor)Jenna Supp-Montgomerie (Committee Member)Lina-Maria Murillo (Committee Member)Jiyeon Kang (Committee Member)Billie Murray (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Communication Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.007131
- Number of pages
- ix, 282 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Micki Burdick
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/25/2023
- Date approved
- 05/08/2023
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-282).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
White, Evangelical women in the pro-life movement utilize emotion, traditional femininity, and visual spectacle to surveil birthing people in the United States. Spectacular surveillance is the term used for this unique type of biopolitical control that blocks people from reproductive healthcare through rhetorics of shame and white nationhood. Overall, the pro-life movement through spectacular surveillance ties together the roles of white conservative women in movements, the use of protest within Religious Right conservative groups, as well as the creation of fetal personhood through reproductive technologies such as sonograms. Overall, Evangelical white women contribute to and sustain a white Christian nationalism in the United States through spectacular surveillance of reproductive politics and birthing people.
- Academic Unit
- Communication Studies
- Record Identifier
- 9984424790202771
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