Book Conversation with Lina‑María Murillo: "Reproductive Justice, Health, and Activism in the Borderlands"

Join us for a conversation between historians Lina-María Murillo and Sarah Deutsch. Drawing from her new book "Fighting for Control" (UNC Press, 2025), Murillo will explore the long arc of reproductive justice organizing in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and the cross-border practices of care and resistance that continue to shape it. This will be a critical conversation on how Mexican-origin women in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez are building resilient networks of reproductive care and activism amid decades of surveillance and political pressure. Murillo and Deutsch will trace transborder histories of resistance and collective care that illuminate the ongoing struggle for reproductive justice. Lina-Maria Murillo is Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an accomplished historian and public scholar dedicated to examining and reshaping how we think and talk about reproductive justice through her meticulous research and engaging publications. Her work challenges long and widely held beliefs and (mis)understandings about historically marginalized and racialized communities and their concerns for reproductive liberation. Sarah Jane Deutsch is Professor Emerita of History at Duke University. Her work engages issues of difference, particularly racial, gender, class, and spatial formations. Her most recent book is Making a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and Its Borders, 1898-1940 (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). It follows three previous books: Women and the City: Gender, Space and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (2000); From Ballots to Breadlines: American Women, 1920-1940 (1994); and No Separate Refuge: Culture, Class, and Gender on an Anglo-Hispanic Frontier in the American Southwest, 1880-1940 (1987). The Care Conversations Series invites leading scholars to discuss new books that reframe care across labor, gender, race, disability, and social justice. Each event pairs the author with a Duke interlocutor for cross-disciplinary dialogue. The Fall 2025 series will take place in Bay 4, Smith Warehouse, and is co-sponsored by the Revaluing Care Lab and campus partners. Light lunch served. RSVP to RevaluingCareLab@duke.edu. Learn more at www.revaluingcare.org.