{"title":"The Kinship Roots (Adoption) Narrative in Documentary and Animated Fantasy: Somewhere Between, Twinsters, and Kung Fu Panda","authors":"Susan K. Birnbaum","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0022","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay contains a detailed analysis of the \"Kinship Roots Narrative\" (KRN), defined as a canonical returning to kin and/or roots trope used to represent adoptees. Though present throughout historical literature and folklore, the KRN is analyzed here through the lenses of genealogical bewilderment (the assumption that separation of an adoptee from their biological parents results in irreparable harm to said adoptee) and bionormativity (the cultural schema in which biological families are the gold standard). The films analyzed are the documentary Somewhere Between (2011), the documentary Twinsters (2015) and the animated children's series, Kung Fu Panda (2008–2016). An analysis of how these films adhere to the KRN (including how they represent genealogical bewilderment and bionormativity) will show how they promote biological kinship as the only way to read family and race.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126826746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cross-Species Kinship Dilemmas: Adoption and Dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park Franchise","authors":"Anne Morey, C. Nelson","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0021","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Each of the five films currently comprising Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park series (1993–) presents adoption, with a particular focus on the adoptive father, both as a problem and as the solution to problems within the birth family and the commodity culture within which that family is situated. The series repeatedly traces the process of \"substantiation\" (we borrow this term from Christine Ward Gailey) by requiring adults to look after children from whom they are at first emotionally as well as genetically distant. Yet the tendency to affirm adoption as a solution to weaknesses in the American family coexists with a readiness to consider thorny issues to which adoption draws attention, including the commodification of children, the exploitation of birth parents, and the ethical dimensions of reproductive biotechnologies. This article examines each installment of the franchise to demonstrate the scope and complexity of the commentary on adoption that the series provides. For while all the films manifest certain structural commonalities, each also focuses on a different adoption-related issue, allowing the viewer to read the collective as a decades-long meditation on the preoccupations of the American adoption community in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"64 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113935320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Steeped in Blood: Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family by Frances Latchford (review)","authors":"Carolyn McLeod","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0011","url":null,"abstract":"According to Graves, the adoption of Black Korean children by African American families was “sporadic,” and after a brief surge in the years between 1955 and 1958, the adoption of Korean children by white American families rose significantly and received much more scholarly and popular attention. As a consequence, the role of Black American families in the early years of Korean adoption, as well as the repercussions these adoptions had for the implementation of reforms in domestic adoption cases, have been obscured. Yet, as Graves skillfully and convincingly shows in her book, the experiences and actions of African American couples who adopted Black Korean children form a significant part of the early phase of transnational and transracial adoption from Korea. A War Born Family is thus a rich contribution to the fields of Adoption and Family Studies but ought also to be included in the history of the transnational Civil Rights Movement and Cold War Cultures as well as in discussions on (Black) motherhood and family formations in the 1950s.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126808716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family by Sophie Lewis (review)","authors":"Andrew Tolle","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0012","url":null,"abstract":"andmail.com/politics/article-canada-updates-law-to-allow-non-biological-legal-parents-to-pass-on/. Frye, Marilyn. “In and Out of Harm’s Way: Arrogance and Love.” The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, edited by Paula A. Treichler, Cheris Kramarae, and Beth Stafford, Crossing, 1983, pp. 52–83. Groll, Daniel. Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics, and Gamete Donation. Forthcoming with Oxford UP. Haslanger, Sally. “Family, Ancestry and Self: What is the Moral Significance of Biological Ties?” Adoption & Culture vol. 2, no. 1, 2009, pp. 91–122. Legislative Assembly, Province of Ontario. All Families Are Equal Act (Parentage and Related Registrations Statute Law Amendment). S. O. 2016, c. 23—Bill 28, 2016. https:// www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/s16023. Leighton, Kimberly. “Analogies to Adoption in Arguments Against Anonymous Gamete Donation: Genetizing the Desire to Know.” Family-Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges, edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 239–64. Schuman, Olivia. “The Value of Genetic Ties as Ethical Justification for Banning Gamete Donor Anonymity.” PhD dissertation, York University, 2020. Velleman, J. David. “Family History.” Philosophical Papers vol. 34, no. 3, 2005, pp. 357–78. Witt, Charlotte. “A Critique of the Bionormative Concept of the Family.” Family-Making: Contemporary Ethical Challenges, edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 49–63.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"244 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116288627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Interview with Angela Tucker","authors":"Angela Tucker, Emily N. Bartz","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0007","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This is an interview between Emily N. Bartz and Angela Tucker, an author and documentarian as well as a consultant and activist. The two address Tucker’s work, their views of adoptee representation and voice, and how far adoption studies has come in the past few years.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"194 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133485896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Talking with Each Other","authors":"Emily Hipchen","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0000","url":null,"abstract":"IN THE LONG ISOLATION of our COVID year and then some, the quiet was initially welcome, at least to me: into that diminution came the wild-dolphins in canals, deer in the streets, foxes and raccoons and rabbits populating our depopulated public places. A flat version, nostalgic, two-dimensional, but everything that had been broken away was accounted for, even if it were missing (we could see its outline, we could blame the cat). The Interviews Issue Sometime in the early aughts, a bit more than fifteen years ago, members of The Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Kinship, and Identity-the former name of The Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC)-wondered aloud at a dinner or in a meeting room why the organization didn't have its own conference. When the last panel was finished, the Executive Committee met to debrief;it's at that meeting that the journal you're reading was conceived, as well as my commitment to editing it.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124497687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Interview with Rachel Rains Winslow","authors":"R. Winslow, Emily Hipchen","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0006","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This conversation between adoption studies scholar Rachel Rains Winslow and editor Emily Hipchen canvasses Rains Winslow’s current work, with Karen Balcom, on Ernest Mitler and trans-Canadian border crossing through adoption in the 1950s, current difficulties with adoption policy and immigration through adoption, and other adoption-related policies and practices.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127181561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A War Born Family: African American Adoption in the Wake of the Korean War by Kori A. Graves (review)","authors":"S. Hackenesch","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0010","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"167 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116499684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Interview with Kim Park Nelson","authors":"Kim Park Nelson, Emily Hipchen","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0009","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Emily Hipchen interviews Kim Park Nelson about how adoption cultural studies has changed between 2005 and 2021. They discuss transnational adoption immigration, racial implications of adoption, US adoption policy and law, commercial surrogacy compared to international adoption, and the events and evolution of their shared inter-discipline.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"712 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133016546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Birth and Development of Critical Adoption Studies from a Swedish and Scandinavian Lens","authors":"Tobias Hübinette","doi":"10.1353/ado.2021.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.2021.0003","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Sweden and Scandinavia harbor the Western world’s largest concentration of transnational and transracial adoptees per head. However, in spite of this demographic fact, Sweden and Scandinavia is not an epicenter for Critical Adoption Studies. In this text, Tobias Hübinette offers a Swedish and Scandinavian as well as a personal perspective on the emergence of Critical Adoption Studies.","PeriodicalId":140707,"journal":{"name":"Adoption & Culture","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120965163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}