Research
As a scholar, I take a critical, intersectional feminist, and interdisciplinary approach to exploring the ways in which sciences (and other forms of knowledge production) technologies, and institutions function in concert to constitute both individuals’ lives and their possibilities – socially, politically, and materially.
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I am currently working on three major research projects – Securing Cisgendered Futures, The Biopolitical Paradoxes of Whiteness: Whiteness as a Health Risk for All, and The Matter of Black Life and Death – each of which include a book-length project, as well as additional related articles, presentations, and publications.
Securing Cisgendered Futures
Securing Cisgendered Futures explores the various bioscientific, political, and bureaucratic efforts undertaken within the 21st Century to force individuals into what I call "cisgendered futures," referring to a normalized trajectory of development over the lifespan in which the multiple variables of sex and gender (and sometimes, sexuality) remain in “coherent” alignment. These include the medical management of intersex conditions in infants and small children, the treatment of trans kids with so-called "conversion therapies," and "bathroom bills" that attempt to force individuals to use bathrooms according to the sex they were assigned at birth. I use the word "cisgendered" rather than cisgender to distinguish it from someone's identity (as cisgender, or transgender, or agender, etc.), and to draw emphasis to the various ways we construct that trajectory of development as normal.
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Thus far, I have published multiple articles, a book chapter, and given multiple presentations related to this project (information about which can be found on my Publications/Presentations page). My book, Securing Autonomously Gendered Futures: A Feminist Philosophical Defense of Intersex and Trans Kids is under contract with Duke University Press.
The Biopolitical Paradoxes of Whiteness
As many scholars have noted, there has been a decline in or closing of gaps in racialized health disparities in recent years. However, this is not because the conditions of existence for or the health outcomes of historically marginalized populations are getting better. Rather, it is because those of privileged groups are getting worse.​ The Biopolitical Paradoxes of Whiteness is a critical, interdisciplinary, and intersectionally feminist analysis of the eugenic construction of Whiteness within the United States, specifically as a form or type of life under biopower. The primary aim of this project is to reveal the ways in which this historically constituted, idealized form of life, as well as the traits, expectations, entitlements, and fantasies with which it has come to identify and define itself, results in increased risks of death and disability rise for all of us, no matter what our race. I do this by developing an account of what I call biopolitical paradoxes, referring to policies, laws, or other types of population-level interventions that ostensibly aim to prevent harm, and/or save lives, yet which in practice bring about harm and death for many across racial categories. Notably, the lives that are positioned as being protected from harm or death are often those of ostensibly white women and children. However, such interventions, I argue, aim at protecting Whiteness as an abstract, biopolitical population made of up living beings that is non-identical with being white, specifically as defined by and through the many sociopolitical traits with which we have come to identify it, and via which it has come to identify itself. Indeed, what this seemingly paradoxical epistemological data reveals, many individual lives, including those of white women and children, may be sacrificed as a result of population-level interventions in pursuit of this abstract ideal. Examples of biopolitical paradoxes that I explore in this project include childhood gun death, both "left-wing" and "right-wing" anti-vaccination movements, "pro-life" restrictions on abortion and contraception, and transantagonist efforts to eliminate the development of trans futures.
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Thus far, I have given multiple presentations on the basis of this research. I am currently at work on the book manuscript at the heart of this project, The Biopolitical Paradoxes of Whiteness: Whiteness as a Health Risk for All, as well as a few additional related articles.
The Matter of Black Life and Death
This project explores the ways in which the American system of market-based health insurance tied to employment maldistributes life chances to Black individuals in particular, shaping their lives (and deaths) in ways that are debilitating, and disabling. Beginning from an understanding of Black Lives Matter as an anti-eugenic movement (and understanding eugenics to refer broadly to management of the population), it undertakes the politically urgent task of situating and examining the biopolitical functions of the market-based system of health insurance, which regulates access to and the practice of medicine “in the wake” of slavery. This interdisciplinary project draws upon literatures across the sciences and the humanities, including work in critical race theory, black diaspora studies, critical disability studies, philosophy of biology, feminist epistemologies, the medical humanities, and clinical research.
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I have already given presentations related to this research, and am at work on a book-length manuscript out of this project titled The Matter of Black Life and Death: Race, Biopolitics, and the American Health Insurance Market.
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With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have shifted the focus of my research with regards to this project in order to explore gender and racial disparities related to pandemic. This includes the kinds of gendered and racial disparities seen in COVID-19 exposure, morbidity, and mortality, but also with regards to compliance with social distancing and mask-wearing orders. Video presentations of this research can be found on my Publications/Presentations page.