Myev Rees

Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Religious Studies

Office:  Ladd 205B
Phone:  (518) 580-8404
Email:  mrees@skidmore.edu

EDUCATION:

• Ph.D, Northwestern University
• M.A. Miami University
• B.A. Barnard College, Columbia University

RESEARCH AND TEACHING INTERESTS

American Religion; Religion and Gender; Religion, Media, and Popular and Digital Culture; New Religious Movements; Christian Fundamentalisms; American Religion and the family, pregnancy, motherhood, and childhood; American religion and reproductive rights; Religion and Race and Class; Religion, Medicine, Addiction, and Recovery.

My research examines how popular discourses around motherhood and reproductive agency reinforce white conservative Christian constructions of female bodies, fetal beings, sexual power, and how these discourses sanctify patriarchal family structures, and constructions of white motherhood. My work examines how seemingly feminist initiatives can be vehicles for agendas that enforce sacrificial imaginations of womanhood and motherhood, imbue American white motherhood and pregnancy with supernatural qualities, disempower and devalue women and children of color, and endanger women and children more broadly. Moreover, I argue that digital culture and new media strategies for communication play an integral role in the deployment of these veiled agendas.