How are ethical subjectivities formed during life-crisis events such as pregnancy, birth, illness and death? How do people draw on cultural, textual and material traditions to respond to the challenges of new technologies and biomedicine in questions related to the beginnings of life? Combining the ethnographic and historical study of bioethics in Muslim communities with the study of pre-modern and modern texts in the Islamic discursive tradition, the course focuses on continuity, diversity and change in attitudes towards pregnancy, birth control and the beginnings of life. We will consider how Muslims cultivate ethical subjectivities in increasingly global localities, and the gender politics of reproduction and fertility. Topics include: gender politics of reproductive health, the moral and legal status of the body, “Islamic embryology,” the ensoulment of the fetus, the moral and legal status of the embryo, birth control and family planning, abortion, assisted reproductive technologies, new kinship, and the Islamization of science and technology.