Matty Hemming is writer, researcher, and teacher in the fields of feminist and queer studies, the history of healthcare, and literary studies. Her first book offers a cultural history of twentieth-century reproductive healthcare. Tentatively titled Writing Reproductive Injustice: Maternal Refusal and the History of Healthcare, the project explores how transatlantic literary writers such as Nella Larsen, Jean Rhys, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison critiqued reproductive injustices in Britain and the United States by harnessing aesthetic and political tactics of refusal. The project draws on archival materials including birth control policies, nursing handbooks, and authors’ manuscript drafts to show how writers used personal experience and historical research to produce knowledge about the racial and class stratification of reproductive healthcare that is unavailable elsewhere in the historical record.

Prior to joining the Medical Humanities faculty Matty completed a PhD at University of Pennsylvania, an MA at the University of Amsterdam, and BA at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Matty’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Medical Humanities, The James Baldwin Review, Criticism, and the Routledge Companion to Queer Literary Studies.

At Rice, Matty will teach classes on topics such as healthcare activism, literature and medicine, and reproductive justice.