Robin Kanak Zwier (she/her/hers)

Adjunct Instructor

Community College of Baltimore County

Description of Work: 

After five years at the University of Pittsburgh I defended my dissertation, entitled “Making Maternal Mortality Public: Racialized Reproduction in Medical Review, Investigative Journalism, and Birth Justice Activism,” in Summer 2021. In my dissertation project I studied the processes by which maternal mortality and racial disparities are made legible as issues for public action. By examining the work of Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs), NPR and ProPublica’s Lost Mothers Project, and birth justice organizations such as the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, I found that many rhetorical attempts to address high rates of maternal mortality in the U.S. begin from a race-neutral perspective. Such an approach obscures the U.S.’s legacy of violence and oppression towards Black birthing people and simultaneously configures the Black maternal body as risky. As a result, the possibilities imagined as a result of such rhetoric are less likely to benefit Black birthing people and ameliorate alarming racial disparities. The process of researching and writing the dissertation has raised a number of questions that I hope will guide my future research, including: How do we generate evidence about racial disparities and maternal health? What role do evidential technologies play in supporting or subverting reproductive justice? How do the cultural narratives we tell about pregnancy and childbirth center white motherhood, and how can those narratives be resisted? How can we better value the knowledge and experience of Black birth workers and racial justice organizers in reproductive health spaces? How might we alter our notions of medical standards and evidence in order to meaningfully integrate their knowledge?

Contact: kanakrobin@gmail.com