Description: This book argues that the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth traumatizes pregnant people in various ways, using a select group of horror films to portray this trauma on a visceral level. This analysis allows audiences to identify and empathize with pregnant people who ...
Review Quotes:
"Courtney Patrick-Weber offers a welcome new perspective on horror films that deal with the myriad ways that pregnancy and birth are bound up within medicine, law, and politics. By focusing on the rhetorical framing of issues such as risk and choice, and their role in narratives of trauma and loss, Weber highlights how popular culture might interrogate our assumptions about bodies, power and agency." --Erin Harrington, University of Canterbury
"While horror films have long attended to the female body, Patrick-Weber's analysis provides a useful exploration of the ways the pregnant female body is rendered through the rhetoric of medical technology. Patrick-Weber delves into the complex relationships between gender, science, and horror and produces a series of provocative case studies. This thoughtful volume is a useful addition to conversations about contemporary horror films." --Kendall R. Phillips, Syracuse University