Author: Maria Novotny

Maria Novotny is a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric & Writing at Michigan State University. Her dissertation explores rhetorics of infertility through a community-based art organization, the ART of Infertility. Her research explores how art, as an extended form of multimodal composition, functions as an embodied translation to the experiences of medicine.

For the past two years, much of my research has depended upon my collaboration with Elizabeth Horn-Walker, an art activist who founded the ART of Infertility. This art, oral history and portraiture project works to create embodied representations of infertility through art, poetry and storytelling. As a collaborative partnership, Elizabeth and I travel the country facilitating arts-based workshops and curating community-based art exhibits depicting diverse perspectives of infertility. At these workshops, we invite our participants to bring objects representative of their experiences with infertility. These instructions have resulted in a range of materials brought to workshops, including: ultrasound photos, syringes,…

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