Who Am I?

 

My name is Eva Sullivan and I’m an undergraduate student at UBC studying Anthropology, with a focus in gender and health. In recognition of Anthropology’s colonial roots that have historically worked to silence the voices of marginalized peoples, I’ve tried to think more critically about the ways that scholarship has a tendency to impose identity and meaning on individuals and groups of people. Furthermore, as an international student who is privileged to be studying on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people, I think that it is important for my writing to engage in reflexivity regarding privilege and power. In researching and writing about the intersection of gender, health, and colonialism for this project, I became more conscious of both of these issues, which had a particular impact on framing my posts and the language I chose. I hope to carry the practice of thinking critically about representation and positionally through the rest of my academic career. I am thankful for all of the women who have shared their incredibly intimate stories and experiences of birth with others and hope that these narratives can help illicit change in health care systems and policies across Canada.