Marcia Inhorn

Professor Inhorn is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs and Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies (CMES) in the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. As Past-President of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA) of the American Anthropological Association, Inhorn was the Program Chair of the SMA conference on “Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Celebrating 50 Years of Interdisciplinarity,” held at Yale September 24-27, 2009.

Inhorn’s research interests revolve around science and technology studies (STS), gender and feminist theory (including masculinity studies), religion and bioethics, globalization and global health, cultures of biomedicine and ethnomedicine, stigma and human suffering. Over the past 20 years, Inhorn has conducted multi-sited research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America. She is the author of three books on the subject, Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt (Routledge, 2003), Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt (U Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions (U Pennsylvania Press, 1994), which have won the American Anthropological Association’s Eileen Basker Prize and Diana Forsythe Prize for outstanding feminist anthropological research in the areas of gender, health, science, technology, and biomedicine.

Inhorn is also the primary editor or co-editor of six volumes, including Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society (Oxford U Press, 2009), Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity, and Reproduction (Berghahn Books, 2009), Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium (Berghahn Books, 2007), and Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (U California Press, 2002).

As a Middle Eastern scholar, Inhorn has been a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. With research support from Fulbright-Hays and the National Science Foundation, she has been at work on two related research projects, “Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies” and “Globalization and Reproductive Tourism in the Arab World.” Currently, she is writing a book entitled Reconceiving Middle Eastern Manhood: Islam, Assisted Reproduction, and Modern Masculinities, which serves as an ethnographic challenge to received wisdoms and neo-orientalist stereotypes in a post-9/11 world.

Inhorn is the founding editor of JMEWS (Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies), the professional journal of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (Middle East Studies Association); associate editor of Global Public Health; and co-editor for the Berghahn Book series on Fertility, Sexuality, and Reproduction.

WGSS 431 Intersectionality & Women’s Health
WGSS 459 Masculinity & Men’s Health
WGSS 265 Global Health: Anthropological Perspectives