In my research and teaching, I focus on issues associated with gender and medicine. Using a range of historical, qualitative, and quantitative methods, I examine questions about how biological bodies and cultural norms interact to influence scientific knowledge, medical markets, and individual experiences. My first book, Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm (University of California Press, 2011), received awards from the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association. In 2013, I was honored to receive the Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Research, one of Yale’s highest honors. Currently, I am researching and writing my second book, Guynecology: Men, Medical Knowledge, and Reproduction (under contract with the University of California Press). Funded by a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation, this project examines the history of medical knowledge-making about men’s reproduction and its consequences for individual men. In addition, I am writing articles based on two original surveys, one on women’s bodily experiences of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the second on Americans’ attitudes toward genetic risk (with Shana Gadarian, funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).

Gender and medicine, medical knowledge-making about men’s reproduction and its consequences for individual men,women’s bodily experiences of in vitro fertilization (IVF).