Director of Women & Gender Studies
Klapper Hall, Room 345
718-997-4661
[email protected]
You can find my short CV here (updated January 2025).
Research Interests
I write about cultural histories of reproduction and reproductive technologies. My edited collection Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade tells the history of abortion before 1973 through abortion’s representations in selected short stories, excerpts of novels, poetry, memoirs, a play, and speeches. My book Pregnancy Test was published with Bloomsbury Press’s Object Lessons series in March 2023. Pregnancy Test tells the history of the pregnancy test and how it changed what it means to be pregnant. My first book Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940 (Rutgers UP, 2014) presents a genealogy of the liberal rhetoric that currently subtends both the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” discourses of abortion today.
Other research interests include late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature, especially the novels of Edith Wharton, the history of eugenics, disability studies, and feminist theory. You can find some of my writing on the peer-reviewed history of medicine and gender blog, Nursing Clio.
Educational Background
Ph.D. in English/ Certificate in Women and Gender Studies, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
B.A. in English, Wesleyan University
Teaching Interests
I teach courses in theory, both for the English Department (as English 244) and in Women & Gender Studies (WGS 201W). I like to introduce students to how feminist theory, queer theory, and race theory all influence how we read and understand literature and culture. I’ve also taught undergraduate courses about the history of American literature and medicine, health humanities, and women/ feminist writers.
I’ve taught a range of courses for our MA program, including the required English 701: Methodologies for Graduate Studies. Most recently, I’ve taught MA courses about the history of eugenics and American Literature; a 19th-Century American literature course that examined what’s American about American literature; and a course about American memoirs with a focus on health and disability narratives.
Selected Publications
Books
Abortion Stories: American Literature Before Roe v. Wade (editor). Penguin Classics, March 2025.
Pregnancy Test. Object Lessons Series with Bloomsbury Press, March 2023.
Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880- 1940. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, July 2014.
Edited Collections
Forum for Feminist Studies on “50 Years after Roe v. Wade.” Winter 2023.
Special Issue of Medical Humanities, “Making Modern Maternity.” Co-edited with Whitney Wood, Heather Love, and Jerika Sanderson. June 2023.
Special Issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly, “Inheritance.” Co-edited with Maria Bellamy. Spring/ Summer 2020.
Special Issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, “Disorienting Disability.” Co-edited with Michele Friedner. July 2019.
Selected Articles
“From Maternal Impressions to Eugenics: Pregnancy and Inheritance in the Nineteenth-Century U.S.” Journal of the Medical Humanities 43.4 (June 2022): 303-317.
“13 Ways of Looking at Reproductive Lives.” American Literary History 33.1 (December 2020).
“Disability and Debility in Edith Wharton’s Novels.” College Literature 47.3 (Summer 2020).
Selected Book Chapters
“Eugenic Babies and the Dark History of Sperm Donations.” In The Nursing Clio Reader. Eds. Nursing Clio Collective. Rutgers University Press, September 2025.
“Masculinity, Eugenics, and American Family Stories.” In Seminal: On Sperm, Health, and Politics. Eds. Rene Aleming, Lisa Campo- Engelstein, and Brian T. Nguyen. NYU Press, June 2025.
“’Is that a test from the supermarket?’: How the Home Pregnancy Test Changed the Representation of Abortion in American Television and Film.” Rewriting the Abortion Narrative: The Power of Popular Culture. Eds. Brenda Boudreau and Kelli Maloy, 2023.
“It’s All Biopolitics: A Feminist Response to the Critique of Prenatal Testing.” The Politics of Reproduction: Adoption, Abortion, and Surrogacy in the Age of Neoliberalism. Eds. Modhumita Roy and Mary Thompson. Ohio University Press, October 2019.
Public Writing
“After ‘Abortion’: A 1966 Book and the World that It Made,” Public Books, October 2025. [Forthcoming Oct. 23, 2025]
“Abortion After All: Reproductive Justice in a Post-Dobbs World,” conversation with Heather Latimer. Post45 special issue on Abortion Storytelling, June 2024.
“Home Pregnancy Tests Could Now Put Women in Danger,” WIRED magazine. April 2023.
