Stitching Stories: My “Hot Girl Dissertations” Summer on Black Women’s Fertility Journeys”
May 27, 2025
The past few months I’ve spent my time having what I’ve been calling a “hot girl dissertation summer” (shout out to Megan Thee Stallion). Mainly, I’ve been focusing on writing and data collection. My dissertation is a qualitative study investigating Black women’s experiences with fertility treatments. It’s been an interesting summer working on a dissertation topic that has suddenly and unexpectedly gained national political attention due in part to its connection to abortion rights and fetal personhood, and to the current presidential campaign. But I digress, as I’m not here to write about the politics of fertility – I’ll save that for another time. Instead, I’m here to give you all the hot gossip on my “hot girl dissertation summer.”
After receiving the Public Scholarship Practice Spaces Summer Fellowship, I knew, using the grant money I received, I was going to spend the summer co-creating quilts with my participants. However, like most things in life, research and data collection don’t always go as planned. I envisioned myself sitting face-to-face with my participants and quilting with them during interviews. However, most of the participants in my study don’t live in the same city, let alone the same state, so our interactions took place virtually on Zoom.
After spending countless hours in NYC’s Garment District and shopping online for the perfect shades and varieties of fabrics for this quilt, I had to pivot and find a new way to create this quilt that is meant to materially and visually represent both participants’ fertility experiences and the research process. Instead of sewing with participants and quilting together, I made the decision that I would be responsible for the physical labor of creating the quilt, and participants would take on the creative part of the quilt by choosing its colors and shapes. Each participant would share their fertility journey with me, then put that journey into colors and words. Then I would take those colors and shapes and create their own unique square that would then be patchworked together to create a final quilt. I’m still working on the quilt and recruiting participants. Through this process I’ve learned that research doesn’t always go to plan, yet something beautiful can still be created during the process. These photos represent various stages of my ongoing quilting process.
Author
Frances M. Howell
PS2 Public Research Fellow
Frances M. Howell, MA (she/her) is a PhD Candidate in Critical Social/Personality Psychology. Frances’ research focuses on gendered racism in reproductive health care settings, fertility care, discourses of power and the reproductive body, and these topics impact mental health.
