We seek a panelist to participate in a paper session on the commodification of women’s reproductive labor at the 2012 OAH Annual Meeting (in Milwaukee, WI from April 19 to Sunday, April 22, 2012). Our proposed panel will explore how the commodification of women’s reproductive labor complicates prevailing understandings of the relationships between women, the home and the marketplace in the nineteenth-century United States. Our papers will address the practice of wet-nursing in New York City and in the antebellum South. We ask scholars whose work speaks to this theme, particularly those that explore the commodification of women’s reproductive labor from different perspectives or in other geographic locations, to contact us via email at vapnekl@stjohns.edu or sjonesrogers@history.rutgers.edu by December 31, 2010. (You will need to provide a paper prospectus of no more than 250 words and a CV of no more than 500 words for the final submission.)

The deadline for OAH submission is February 1, 2011 so it would be great if you could reach out to us before December 31, 2010.