American University, SOC Faculty Forum will feature professor Brigid Maher discussing The Mama Sherpas: Challenging Stereotypes and Representations through Cinema. Professor Maher will discuss her film work and screen a sneak preview of her latest documentary, The Mama Sherpas, which reveals the role of nurse-midwives in hospitals across the United States. Professor Maher will also discuss her use of the medium to engage in larger issues of feminism and representation.
The Mama Sherpas is a feature-length documentary that follows nurse midwives, the doctors they work with, and their patients over the course of two years. The documentary will provide a personal glimpse into what midwives can bring into the birthing process in the hospital system. Through showing rather than telling, The Mama Sherpas will demonstrate how easily practices of midwifery could be mainstreamed into current medical practices to improve health care and costs of obstetrics care for all involved.
Visit the film’s website for more information.