Anyone who’s taken birth control pills, or knows someone who’s used oral contraception, will recognize the large pill case on display at Middlebury College. Its distinct feature is a month’s worth of little holes, or pill pockets, punctuating a white plastic circle.
Other aspects of this pill container are less standard, including its placement in a miniature golf course in the hockey rink at Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena. The pill pockets in the oversize case are holes — 30 of them! — that function as targets for a golfer shooting at hole No. 2. This challenge, like the others in the 11-hole mini golf course, is constructed around the theme of reproductive justice. It’s an eye-catching piece of a collaborative project that its creators bill as the first feminist miniature golf course.
That claim is tough to verify. But the Reproductive Justice Mini Golf course at Middlebury — part sporting event, part art installation, part feminist critique — is surely the only one where a player has to hit their ball past colorful condoms on penis look-alikes to land in the second hole.
Open to the public and free to play, the course was designed and built primarily by students in the college’s Feminist Building class, with guidance and assistance from teachers. Students in another class, the Politics of Reproduction: Sex, Abortion and Motherhood, also did extensive work on the project, researching and compiling related material and making artwork connected to subthemes presented at each hole.
“I hope that people can understand how much more there is to reproduction and reproductive justice than abortion.” Eliot Nebolsine
The creation of the golf course coincides with assaults on reproductive justice and the undermining of women’s reproductive rights. States around the country are passing legislation that restricts abortion following the United States Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The ruling overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade. The rights of transgender people and the ability to seek gender-affirming health care are also under attack.
Carly Thomsen, associate professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies, conceived of and organized the project. Mini golf presented a way to make a collaborative piece and “scale up” her teaching practice of using games to approach complex topics and engage students and others, she said. Thomsen taught Politics of Reproduction and co-taught Feminist Building with Colin Boyd, the college’s studio art technician.
Eliot Nebolsine, 20, who majors in the history of art and architecture, is the only student who took both courses. She learned about the scope and breadth of issues related to reproductive justice and hopes mini golf players come away similarly enlightened.
“I hope that people can understand how much more there is to reproduction and reproductive justice than abortion,” Nebolsine said.
Reproductive Justice Mini Golf runs through July 15: Thursdays, 4 to 7 p.m.; and Fridays and Saturdays, 2 to 5 p.m., at Chip Kenyon ’85 Arena, Middlebury College. Free.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Up Your Game | A new mini golf course at Middlebury College aims to educate players on reproductive justice”
This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2023.
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