The Routledge Critical Adoption Studies Reader presents a central source of scholarly approaches arranged around fundamental questions about how adoption, as a complex practice of family-making, is represented in art, philosophy, the law, history, literature, political science, and other humanities. Divided into three major parts, this volume traces the history of adoption and its analogues, identifies major movements in the practice, and illuminates comprehensive disciplinary frameworks that underpin the field’s approaches. This key scholarly and pedagogical tool includes excerpts from scholars such as Judith Butler, Dorothy Roberts, Margaret Homans, Margaret D. Jacobs, Arissa Oh, Marianne Novy, and Kori Graves. It explores a variety of representations of adoption and embraces interdisciplinary discussions of reproduction as it intersects race, ethnicity, power relations, the concept of nation, history, the idea of childhood, and many other contemporary concerns. The Routledge Critical Adoption Studies Reader provides a single-volume resource for instructors or students who want a convenient collection of foundational materials for teaching or reference, and for researchers newly discovering the field. This volume’s humanities perspective makes it the first of its kind to collect secondary materials in Critical Adoption Studies for researchers, who, in taking up cultural representations of adoption, examine cultural contexts not for their impact on the practice over time but for their richness of engagement with the human experience of belonging, kinship, and identity.
Introduction: Belonging
Part 1:
Foundations, Histories, Frames
From Carp, E. Wayne. Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption, Harvard UP, 1998.
From Modell, Judith. "Natural Bonds, Legal Boundaries: Modes of Persuasion in Adoption Rhetoric." Imagining Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture, edited by Marianne Novy, U of Michigan P, 2003, pp. 207−230.
From Leighton, Kimberly. "Addressing the Harms of Not Knowing One’s Heredity: Lessons from Genealogical Bewilderment." Adoption & Culture, vol. 3, 2005, pp. 63−107.
From Roberts, Dorothy. Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. Basic, 2022.
From Sufian, Sandra. Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern America. U of Chicago, 2022.
From Zelizer, Viviana. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. Princeton UP, 1994.
From Park Nelson, Kim. Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism. Rutgers UP, 2016.
From Strathern, Marilyn. After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge UP, 1992.
From Singley, Carol. "Teaching American Literature: The Centrality of Adoption." Modern Language Studies, vol. 34, iss. 1/2, 2004, pp. 76−83.
From Callahan, Cynthia. Kin of Another Kind: Transracial Adoption on American Literature. U of Michigan P, 2010.
From Potter, Sarah. Everybody Else: Adoption and the Politics of Domestic Diversity in Postwar America. U of Georgia P, 2014.
Part 2
Embodiment and Adoption
From Park, Shelley M. Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood: Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended, and Polygamous Families. SUNYP, 2014.
From Jacobs, Margaret D. A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children. U of Nebraska P, 2010.
From Bartholet, Elizabeth. Family Bonds: Adoption and the Politics of Parenthood. Beacon, 1993.
From Butler, Judith. "Is Kinship Always Heterosexual?" differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, vol 13, no. 1, 2002, pp. 14−44.
From Stevens, Jacqueline. Reproducing the State. Princeton UP, 1999.
From Briggs, Laura. "The Intimate Politics of Race and Globalization." Adoption Across Race and Nation, edited by Silke Hackenesch, The Ohio State UP, 2023, pp. 15−37.
From Novy, Marianne. Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama. U of Michigan P, 2007, pp. 56−86.
From Dorow, Sara K. Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship. NYUP, 2006.
From Franklin, Sarah. Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception. Routledge, 1997.
From Fedosik, Marina. "The Power to ‘Make Live’: Biopolitics and Reproduction in Blade Runner 2049." Adoption & Culture, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 169−175.
From Eng, David L. The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy. Duke UP, 2010.
Part 3
Adoption Narratives
From Melosh, Barbara. "Adoption Stories: Autobiographical Narrative and the Politics of Identity." Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, edited by E. Wayne Carp, U of Michigan P, 2004, pp. 218−246.
From Homans, Margaret. "Adoption Narratives, Trauma, and Origins." Narrative, vol. 14, no. 1, 2006, pp. 4−26.
From Choy, Catherine Ceniza. Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption. NYUP, 2013.
From Graves, Kori A. A War-Born Family: African American Adoption in the Wake of the Korean War. BYUP, 2020.
From Oh, Arissa. To Save the Children of Korea: The Cold War Origins of International Adoption. Stanford UP, 2015.
From Jerng, Mark. Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging. U of Minnesota P, 2010.
From Patton, Sandra. Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America. NYUP, 2000.
From Glaser, Gabrielle. American Baby: A Mother, A Child, and the Secret History of Adoption. Penguin, 2002.
From Haslanger, Sally. "Family, Ancestry and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?" Adoption & Culture, vol. 2, 2009, 91−122.
From Jacobson, Heather. Labor of Love: Gestational Surrogacy and the Work of Making Babies. Rutgers UP, 2016.
From Latchford, Frances J. "Reckless Abandon: The Politics of Victimization and Agency in Birthmother Narratives." Adoption and Mothering, edited by Frances J. Latchford, Demeter, 2012, pp. 73−87.
Biography
Emily Hipchen received her PhD in literary studies from the University of Georgia. She is a Fulbright scholar, the editor of Adoption & Culture, co-editor of the book series Formations: Adoption, Kinship, and Culture, and an emeritus editor of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies. She is also the author of a memoir, Coming Apart Together: Fragments from an Adoption (2005). She’s an editor of Inhabiting La Patria: Identity, Agency, and Antojo in the Works of Julia Alvarez (2013) and The Routledge Auto|Biography Studies Reader (2015), as well as five special issues, "Adoption Life Writing," "Adoption Studies Research," "Critique as a Signature Pedagogy," "What’s Next? The Futures of Auto|Biography Studies," and most recently, "The Dobbs Issue." She directs the Nonfiction Writing Program as a faculty member in the Department of English at Brown University, where she teaches nonfiction writing and editing.
