Sexuality, Women’s & Gender Studies A Conversation with Trustee Gretchen Sisson '06

The Women’s and Gender Center (WGC) and the Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies Department (SWAGS) are proud to present Amherst College Trustee Gretchen Sisson ’06 discussing her forthcoming book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, a critical, ten-year examination of domestic adoption. Centering the stories of relinquishing mothers, the book chronicles our country's refusal to care for families at the most basic level, and instead allow cultural and political ideas of adoption to advance an individual, private solution to large-scale social problems. A "comprehensive and harrowing debut" (Publishers Weekly, starred review) that "contributes to our national conversation of what reproductive justice really means" (Gloria Steinem), Relinquished is a necessary examination for our post-Dobbs era.

This event will be co-hosted by Khary Polk, Associate Professor of Black Studies and SWAGS and chair of SWAGS, and Jallicia Jolly, Assistant Professor of American Studies and Black Studies. An audience Q&A will follow.

Gretchen Sisson '06 is a research sociologist with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She studies abortion and adoption in the United States, and her work on adoption relinquishment after abortion denial was cited in the dissent for the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. At Amherst, she double-majored in Psychology and Women's and Gender Studies (now called SWAGS), and she joined the Board of Trustees in July 2023.

Copies of Relinquished will be raffled off at this event. Raffle tickets will be given out at the start of the event. Winners will be drawn at the end of the event. You must be present to win.

A reception will be held at 4:00 p.m. in the lobby of Converse Hall. Light refreshments will be provided. The event will begin at 4:30 p.m. in Cole Assembly room in Converse Hall..

Free and open to the public.

Co-sponsored by the Office of the Board of Trustees.

Amherst College strives for our campus experiences to be universally designed and usable by all people to the extent possible. Please contact swags@amherst.edu with any accommodations that you require to participate in this event.