Welcome to the world’s first feminist
Reproductive Justice Mini Golf course!
Mini golf is generally weird, of course. But this is not just your typical weird mini golf course. It is also a playable and informative feminist and queer art installation.
Photo courtesy of Caleb Kenna 2023
Here’s how it works—You will move through 11 different holes, each of which focuses on a different reproductive justice topic: science and medicine, contraception, care work, surrogacy, sex education, crisis pregnancy centers, transportation, environmental justice, foster care and adoption, incarceration, and abortion justice activism. While you play, you’ll encounter the kinds of places that make up our world, such as a hospital, home, prison, and bar. That these places are familiar means that reproductive injustices are built into the fabric of our social world—but it also means that opportunities for resistance are all around us.
You can learn about these injustices as well as resistance to them throughout the mini golf course. Each hole includes QR codes full of educational information as well as student-generated art on the topic. So, please click on the QR codes, check out the art, and read the artists’ statements.
We think you’ll be glad you did!
Photo courtesy of Caleb Kenna 2023
BEFORE YOU START PUTTING, JUST A WEE BIT OF BACKGROUND:
The Reproductive Justice Mini Golf course was designed and built primarily by faculty, staff, and students connected to two Middlebury College classes: Feminist Building, co-taught by Colin Boyd and Carly Thomsen, and Politics of Reproduction: Sex, Abortion, and Motherhood, taught by Carly Thomsen. Our building of the Reproductive Justice Mini Golf course is grounded in the principles of reproductive justice, a concept Loretta Ross developed in conjunction with fellow Black feminist activists, to assert that reproductive health is a social justice issue, and further, to push feminists to see issues other than the legal right to abortion as crucial reproductive concerns. Doing so requires fighting against the sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and homo- and transphobia that makes both parenting and accessing abortion more difficult for some than others.
Ultimately, Reproductive Justice Mini Golf grew out of a belief that we deserve to be reminded of the pleasures of learning and of engaging in social justice activism alike. The result of our work is this exhibition—a translation of the theoretical into the material, an invitation into our conversations, and, we hope, a source of inspiration to fight for a reproductively just world in creative new ways.
SUPPORTED BY
MIDDLEBURY GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND FEMINIST STUDIES /
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT / FEMINIST RESOURCE CENTER AT CHELLIS HOUSE /
GENSLER FAMILY FUND / ASSOCIATE DEAN OF THE ARTS /
CENTER FOR COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT / INNOVATION HUB /
FILM & MEDIA STUDIES / ADA HOWE KENT FUND /
AXINN CENTER FOR THE PUBLIC HUMANITIES PUBLIC HUMANITIES LAB INITIATIVE SUPPORTED BY THE DAVIS EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION /
MIDD.DATA / VERMONT WORKS FOR WOMEN / PROVIDENCE COLLEGE /
HAMILTON COLLEGE / MSU DENVER
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information or to make a donation to the Center for Public Feminism, an arts-based feminist collective, please check out
