“Interrogating the Intersections of Race and Reproduction in Medicine, Science, and Technology," Wenner-Gren Foundation workshop, New York

This workshop was once the seed of an idea long ago and it is a privilege to be part of the conversations planned by/for anthropologists on the intersections of race and reproduction. Our stellar grant-writers and organizers, Natali Valdez and Daisy Deomampo, organized a productive 2-day workshop sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation during which anthropologists from around the world discussed each participant's pre-circulated article-length paper. I presented a paper examining the enactments of race in US Christian embryo adoption. I will use feedback from this workshop to revise the paper for submission to a special journal issue arranged with Medical Anthropology.

Here's a description of the workshop's vision from the funding grant, and keep an eye out for the forthcoming journal issue!

This workshop brings ethnographic research on reproduction into conversation with anthropological debates about race and identity. While there is a rich literature that examines the social and cultural implications of reproduction, relatively few ethnographic studies have placed race and racialization at the center of analysis. The primary goal of the workshop is to convene a group of junior and senior scholars who have been working in diverse ethnographic sites--such as the neonatal intensive care unit, the infertility clinic, or the embryo adoption agency--to incorporate theoretical insights of critical race studies into recent anthropological work on reproduction. This two-day workshop will include anthropologists from the U.S. as well as the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Brazil, and Australia, during which participants will comment on papers that have been exchanged prior to the workshop. The goal is to produce a special journal issue on this topic.