UWM Libraries Research and Course Guides: Reproductive Health, Rights, and History: Art and Streaming Media

Find Art and Film

Find Documentaries and Film

Docuseek
A collection of independent, social-issue and environmental documentaries. Producers and distributors include Bullfrog, Collective Eye, dGenerate, First Run Features, GOOD DOCS, Icarus, and Women Make Movies.
Film Platform Collection
Innovative collaboration between leading filmmakers and film distributors from around the world bringing the finest documentary films to an academic audience. This global selection of films includes many Oscar nominated documentaries and film festival winners. These titles, chosen for their mastery of filmmaking, introduce new concepts, expose students to fresh perspectives, and enhance classroom discussions

FilmsforAction.org: Abortion
Over the last 16 years, FFA has curated over 1,000 free documentaries and 4,000 short films, plus over 150 pay-per-view documentaries, spanning 34 topics related to changing the world.

Find visual art

JSTOR
Provides access to journal articles, books, images, and primary sources. Contents include the Artstor image collection, archival and current scholarly journal content, and historical documents.

Media Beyond The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, has been criticized for its lack of representation of women of color and its reinforcement of white supremacy and colonialism in the dystopian society depicted in the book. The novels below have been selected because they offer more nuanced and intersectional explorations of bodily autonomy.

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Call Number: Request from another UW System Library
ISBN: 9780593337691
Publication Date: 2022-04-12
This historical novel fictionalizes a 1973 involuntary sterilization case from the view point of a African American Nurse. An excellent exploration of America's long history with race-based eugenics.
Adventures in Bodily Autonomy by Raven Belasco (Editor)
Call Number: Place UW Request to get this book from another school
Publication Date: 2023-10-16
*Held by UW Madison | Get via UW Request*
Fourteen tales that use science fiction, fantasy, and horror to explore, imagine, and take big bites into the concept of bodily autonomy and reproductive justice.

Documentaries

Our Bodies Our Doctors (2019)
***Film is only available until November 6, 2023***
Nearly 1 in 4 women have an abortion during their lifetime, yet the doctors who perform this commonplace procedure are rarely seen. The film follows these quiet heroes into the procedure room, showing their skill and compassion for women.
The Janes
In the spring of 1972, police raided an apartment on the South Side of Chicago where seven women who were part of a clandestine network were arrested and charged. Using code names, fronts, and safe houses to protect themselves and their work, the accused had built an underground service for women seeking safe, affordable, illegal abortions. They called themselves "Jane."

Films (fiction)

Grandma (2015)
**Request from another UW System Library**
Elle has just gotten through breaking up with her girlfriend when Elle's granddaughter Sage unexpectedly shows up needing $600 for an abortion before sundown. Temporarily broke, Grandma Elle and Sage spend the day trying to get their hands on the cash as their unannounced visits to old friends and flames end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets.

Slow Burn Podcast | Season 7: Roe vs. Wade
For the seventh season of Slate’s Slow Burn, host Susan Matthews explores the path to Roe—a time when more Republicans than Democrats supported abortion rights. You’ll hear the forgotten story of the first woman ever to be convicted of manslaughter for having an abortion, the unlikely Catholic power couple who helped ignite the pro-life movement, and a rookie Supreme Court justice who got assigned the opinion of a lifetime.
Rough Translation: Ukraine Under the Counter
This episode of the "Rough Translation" podcast details the struggle to get abortion pills to Ukraine from Germany as Ukraine continues to defend its territory from Russia.
Sexing History: Abortion on Trial
In 1975, two years after Roe v. Wade, an all white and mostly Catholic jury convicted Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an African American physician, of manslaughter for performing a legal second trimester abortion. His trial transformed the anti-abortion movement.
Sexing History: Love and Labor
The story of African American midwifery is part of a larger history of Black women’s struggles to protect their own lives, as well as the lives of other Black women and their children. This episode explores the long history of African American midwives, doulas, and birth attendants who have labored to ensure the safety and dignity of Black mothers and their children in and beyond the maternity ward. These Black women have worked to provide emotional support and medical advocacy for other pregnant and laboring women. Their reproductive advocacy makes clear that the delivery room has become an important site to ensure that Black Lives Matter.