Peter Zarrow

Fellow’s Talk: Sara Matthiesen on Reproductive Justice

Posted on March 13, 2025March 13, 2025 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

“Free Abortion on Demand” After Roe: A Reproductive Justice History of Abortion Organizing in the United States

Sara Matthiesen (Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, George Washington University)

with a response by Peter Zarrow (History, UConn)

Wednesday March 26, 2025, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) in 2022, many abortion rights activists responded with the slogan “Roe was never enough!” The phrase invoked a reality that had long defined legal abortion in the U.S.: Roe’s standing did not translate into widespread access to the procedure. But exactly how long have supporters of abortion rights wielded this criticism of Roe, and what would the feminist movement for legalization have thought about this rallying cry? In this talk, Professor Sara Matthiesen recovers feminist responses to the legalization of abortion in 1973, and asks what their varied assessments can teach us about the contemporary struggle over bodily autonomy.

Sara Matthiesen is Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at George Washington University. Her first book, Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice after Roe v. Wade (University of California Press, 2021), shows how incarceration, for-profit and racist healthcare, HIV/AIDS, parentage laws, and poverty were worsened by state neglect in the decades following Roe. In 2022, Reproduction Reconceived received the Sara A. Whaley Prize for best monograph on gender and labor from National Women’s Studies Association. Professor Matthiesen’s current project, “‘Free Abortion on Demand’ after Roe: A Reproductive Justice History of Abortion Organizing in the United States,” traces the multi-racial feminist activism that opposed state and medical control of abortion throughout the era of choice. At GWU, she regularly teaches Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, for which she was awarded the Kenny Teaching Prize in 2022.

Peter Zarrow’s research focuses on modern Chinese thought and culture. He has written on major intellectual figures and political movements in the late Qing and Republican periods (1880s–1949), such as Liang Qichao, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, Kang Youwei, and others, as well as anarchism, Marxism, and conservatism. His most recent monograph is Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880-1940 (SUNY Press, 2021), and he recently published a translation of essay by Liang Qichao, Thoughts from the Ice-Drinker’s Studio: Essays on China and the World (Penguin Random House, 2023).

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible.

Fellow’s Talk: Peter Zarrow on Heritage and History

Posted on January 8, 2025January 8, 2025 by Della Zazzera, Elizabeth

Heritage of Kings: France–England–China–Japan

Peter Zarrow (Professor, History, UConn)

with a response by Jesse Olsavsky (History & Gender Studies, Duke Kunshan University)

Wednesday January 29, 2025, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

My talk “Heritage of Kings: France–England–China–Japan” examines how major heritage sites in four countries shape their views of the past. I focus on palaces and temples associated with the monarchy, suggesting that national identity in each case today is formed partly in relationship to views of the earlier kingdom. I ask whether a comparative approach is useful in understanding how different societies memorialize the past. In theory at least, by highlighting similarities and differences we can determine if there are common patterns in the process of national heritagization and determine what cultural properties are unique to each national culture.

Peter Zarrow is professor of History at UConn. His research focuses on modern Chinese thought and culture, and his current project explores national heritage in China and Japan. He is the author of China in War and Revolution, 1895-1949 (2005) and since coming to UConn in 2014 has published Educating China: Knowledge, Society and Textbooks in a Modernizing World, 1902–1937 (2015) and Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880-1940 (2021).

Jesse Olsavsky is an assistant professor of History and a co-director of the Gender Studies Initiative at Duke Kunshan University, Jiangsu Province, China. He is a scholar of Abolitionism, Pan-Africanism and their legacies. He is the author of The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Revolutionary Abolitionism, 1835–1861 (2022), which was a finalist for the Harriet Tubman book prize. His research has been supported by such institutions as the Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture, the NEH, the ACLS, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. He will spend his fellowship year working on his second book project titled “In The Tradition: The Abolitionist Tradition and the Routes of Pan-Africanism.” The project will explore the ways numerous intellectuals and movements in the US, West Africa, and the West Indies, from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, re-invoked and reinterpreted the history of the struggle to abolish slavery during their own struggles for African unity and decolonization.