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Matty Hemming

(she/her/hers)

Fisher-Bennett Hall 319
215-898-7357

I am a PhD candidate in the department of English at Penn. My research is situated at the intersection of Black feminism, feminist and queer literary studies, and the medical humanities. My dissertation examines how transatlantic literary writers rejected the institution of motherhood by critiquing the racialized and classed conditions of reproductive healthcare across the twentieth century. I focus on marginalized experiences of pregnancy, abortion, and birth depicted in the work of Nella Larsen, Jean Rhys, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. I show how their portrayal of local and historically specific reproductive practices foregrounds the mutually formative relationship between racial and economic hierarchies and medical practice.

 I received a BA in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London (2014) and an rMA in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam (2017). I hold graduate certificates from the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and Penn's Center for Teaching and Learning. I was a coordinator for the Gender and Sexuality Studies reading group (2020-2021) as well as President of the Graduate English Association (2020-2021). For the AY 2022-23 was the Graduate Associate for the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the James Baldwin Review, QED: A Journal of Queer WorldmakingCriticismRoutledge Companion to Queer Literary Studies, and Medical Humanities.

 

 

Courses Taught

summer 2024

ENGL 0070.910 Literature and Medicine  

summer 2023

ENGL 0050.910 Sex and Power in the US  

fall 2022

ENGL 2303.401 Intro to Queer Studies  

spring 2022

fall 2021

GSWS 002.203 Gender and Society  
ENGL 002.204 Gender and Society  

fall 2019