Brittany R. Leach is a Lecturer in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She recently received a PhD in Political Theory from the University of Virginia. Her primary areas of research and teaching are feminist theory, transnational feminism, reproductive politics, and Continental political thought in the modern and contemporary periods. Her published articles include “Abjection and Mourning in the Struggle over Fetal Remains” in Contemporary Political Theory and “Who’s Backlashing Against Whom? Feminism, Backlash, and the American Pro-Life Movement’s ‘Mother-Child Strategy’” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Her current book project, tentatively entitled “Reproductive Freedom Beyond Individualism: Abortion, Bodily Autonomy, and Feminist Community” aims to complicate borders and boundaries in the context of pregnant bodies and bodies politic, arguing that blurring distinctions between individual and community can reinforce rather than undermine feminist defenses of reproductive autonomy.

In the 2019-2020 academic year, she was awarded a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship in Religion and Ethics for completion of her dissertation, entitled “Death Before Birth: Theorizing Pregnant Embodiment, Reproductive Autonomy, and the Politics of Abortion.” Previously, she served a two-year term as an Assistant Editor at the journal Political Theory.