Centering Ritual and Visualization in Birth and Art: A Conversation with Anna Hennessey

Postpartum Production

When we decided to focus this season on the subject of birth and creativity, we knew we’d have to include Anna Hennessey, a writer and scholar based in San Francisco. Much of Anna's writing over the past decade, which includes a book called Imagery, Ritual, and Birth: Ontology between the Sacred and the Secular, is devoted to the topic of birth in the humanities. She also has a blog called Visualizing Birth, intended to provide people with images, videos and stories that they can use as practical tools to help them in envisioning the birth of their own children.

In addition to her writing, Anna is the current director of the Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth, an intellectual hub for scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences who research pregnancy and birth in their fields. Her academic background is in the history of religion, with a focus on Chinese art, philosophy, religion, and language. She's taught in the University of California and California State University systems, and has researched as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. She lives with her husband and children in San Francisco and travels frequently to Catalonia, her husband's homeland. Anna is also deeply connected to her own Irish heritage and Ireland, which is a topic that we discuss here as well.

Kaitlin’s conversation with Anna is deeply informative, rich with insightful references to scholars and to artists throughout history who are changing our conception of the intellectual as well as the practical possibilities of birth art.

Books referenced in the podcast:

• Birth as an American Rite of Passage
• The Mother Wave
• Matricentric Feminism

Also mentioned in the podcast:

Call for Submissions: Society for the Study of Pregnancy Birth (SSPB) Virtual Symposium: "Natality: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Birth as Existential Experience"

• The Birth Rites Collection UK

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