Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds

Wendy Luttrell is Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and author of School-smartand Mother-wise: Working-Class Women's Identity andSchooling (Routledge), winner of the 1998 Oliver Cromwell Cox Award from the American Sociological Association's Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities.

"A beautiful, moving book about the way in which poor young pregnant women are positioned as objects of shaming and pathologising practices. Pregnant Bodies, FertileMinds is a searing indictment of current social policies." -- Valerie Walkerdine, author of Growing UpGirl: Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class"A breakthrough book...[A] rich ethnographic study...Theoretically sophisticated and beautifully written, this study uses original and innovative methodology to raise and reflect upon issues of gender, race, culture and the institutional structure of schools." -- Kathleen Weiler, editor of FeministEngagements: Reading, Resisting, and Revisioning MaleTheorists in Education and Cultural Studies (Routledge)"An extraordinary and moving book and a theoretical and ethnographic stunner. It is hard to imagine that anyone other than her subjects themselves could portray their voices and selves with such compelling immediacy and liveliness better than Luttrell. A brilliant contribution to our greater knowledge of the worlds of gender, motherhood, race, and adolescence." -- Nancy Chodorow, author of The Power of Feelings: PersonalMeaning in Psychoanalysis, Gender, and Culture"The triumph of Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds is that it manages to weave the social worlds of girls, the social stigma of pregnancy, and the social policies that swaddle these young women in and out of school into a compassionate and haunting ethnography." -- Carol Stack, author of All Our Kin"Luttrell's work...connects the reader to prominent literacy and academic pieces on teenage pregnancy, race and poverty...Luttrell's writing style is casual yet well researched. Her references span sociology, feminist/psychoanalytic theory, and developmental psychology. The range of her citations is impressive and this synthesis of fields broadens the appeal of the book to several academic disciplines." -- ContemporarySociology, Wendy Luttrell

• Acknowledgements preface Part One: Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Schooling I. Separate and Unequal II: Shame, Blame, and the Stigma Wars Part II: Pregnant With Meaning Introduction III: Self Portraits: From Girlhood to Motherhood IV: Making the Self-Which-I-Might-Be V. Showing and Telling Pregnancy Stories Representing Youth Worlds, Identities, and Relationships Part III: Notes to and from the Field V.Entering Girls' Worlds VI.Split At the Roots: Re-thinking Educational Practice Epilogue Appendices Referen ces