It's All in the Delivery

Victoria Sturtevant is an associate professor of film and media studies at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of A Great Big Girl Like Me: The Films of Marie Dressler and co-editor of Hysterical! Women in American Comedy.

• Introduction. What to Expect When You’re Expecting (to Read This Book) Chapter 1. Confinements: Enter the Stork Chapter 2. Hysterical Fatherhood: Male Pregnancy On-Screen Chapter 3. Bad Pregnancies: Social Problems and Bad Seeds Chapter 4. Baby Bust: Infertility and Its Discontents Chapter 5. Shmashmortion: Terminating Abortion Stigma through Comedy Conclusion. It’s All in the Delivery Acknowledgments Notes Index

Well written, clearly argued, full of fascinating ideas and thoughtful analysis, It’s All in the Delivery indeed delivers a powerful and timely set of conclusions. Conceptually strong and well structured, with each chapter building thoughtfully upon its predecessor, the book covers a wide range of textual, narrative, sociocultural and political interventions into pregnancy in American film and TV comedy that will appeal to scholars and reproductive rights activists alike. - Moya Luckett, author of Cinema and Community: Progressivism, Exhibition and Film Culture in Chicago, 1907-1917 Victoria Sturtevant brilliantly captures American culture’s contractionary and complex attitudes toward pregnancy through thoughtful and astute analyses that are often as humorous as the texts on which she focuses. It’s All in the Delivery incorporates an impressive (and exhaustive) range of examples from film and television. Given the number of texts she cites, I would not be surprised if she watched every television show and film that deals with pregnancy from 1896 through 2023 that she could get her hands on. - Michele Schreiber, author of American Postfeminist Cinema: Women, Romance and Contemporary Culture It's All in the Delivery addresses a startling gap in feminist media history by turning attention from parenthood to women’s bodies and experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, infertility, abortion. This book also offers a brilliant contribution to feminist comedy studies, illustrating how comedy has allowed this female experience to be represented in a variety of ways since the birth of cinema and-as argued with great wit in the Conclusion-how this female experience can generate comedy. Given the June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that has brought reproductive issues to the forefront of our national psyche, this book’s exploration of how we have imagined and visualized reproduction over the past one hundred and twenty years is especially timely. - Linda Mizejewski, author of Pretty/Funny: Women Comedians and Body Politics A long overdue look at the continuing struggle to address a most fundamental aspect of life. (Library Journal, Starred Review) [An] incisive study…The eye-opening history reveals a dispiriting and long-standing discomfort with discussions of reproduction while making a forceful argument for comedy’s ability to skewer taboos and expand public conversation. A perceptive take on how depictions of pregnancy have evolved since the mid-20th century, this enthralls. (Publishers Weekly)