Program
All times listed below are ET
9:30 am
Conference opens for registered attendees
10:00 am
Opening
Origins and Resurgence
10:15 am – 11:15 am
Introducing Comstock—the man, the law, the regime (and their ongoing resurrection)
Moderated by:
We begin with the ghost of Anthony Comstock, a man long dead and the progenitor of a law written off as irrelevant. In truth, neither has ever left us. All that Comstock considered “vice” to be policed out of society has yet to be completely freed from his grasp. His regime was merely dormant, now re-activated by his heirs.
A Ghost Story
A Brief Introduction to Comstock
11:15 am – 11:30 am
Break
Peak Comstockery
11:30 am – 12:15 pm
What (most) people are (still) talking about when they talk about Comstock
Moderated by:
We continue with the core concerns of the Comstock policing regime as originally conceived. The Comstock Act is largely remembered—when it is remembered at all—as an anti-obscenity law. But what it considered obscene was broad enough to encompass nearly every aspect of bodily autonomy. Its expansiveness is a reminder: for the Comstockian mind, many of us are obscenities.
Contraception, abortion, and reproductive freedom
Obscenity, porn, and freedom of speech
12:15 pm – 1:15 pm
Lunch break
The (Alleged) Dead Letter Years
1:15 pm – 2:30 pm
Comstock and the ongoing criminalization of bodily autonomy
Moderated by:
Along with the notion that the Comstock Act was primarily an anti-obscenity law—with “obscenity” narrowly defined—comes the story that much of the Comstock Act has been rendered unenforceable and irrelevant. Here we explore how enforcement of the Comstock regime continued even as his law was considered dead.
Abortion travel
Pregnancy criminalization and privacy
Obscenity post Miller
2:30 pm – 2:45 pm
Break
2:45 pm – 6:00 pm
An Ongoing Haunting
From Comstockian contemporary nightmares to the Comstock constituency
So—is this a Comstock revival, or Comstock continuity? Forces that have long been hostile to bodily autonomy and free expression are more openly calling for re-enforcement of the Comstock Act. Like Comstock himself, threats to these fundamental freedoms come as part of a package with other Christian nationalist, anti-immigrant, and male supremacist ideologies. But in the people threatened by Comstock’s resurgence are a powerful constituency containing all of us who face such threats.
2:45 pm – 4:00 pm
Collecting reports from the ground
Andrea Grimes (Moderator)
4:00 pm – 4:15 pm
Break
Beyond Roe, beyond SCOTUS, beyond “enforceability” and the letter of the law
4:15 pm – 5:15 pm
Jules Gill-Peterson (Moderator)
Imagining an anti-Comstock constituency