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I am a medical anthropologist focused on surgical practice and the production, circulation and application of expert knowledge on gendered bodies. My first book, The Look of a Woman (2017, Duke University Press), examines facial feminization surgery, a series of bone and soft tissue reconstructive surgeries intended to feminize the faces of trans- women. My current projects include multisited ethnographic research investigating how US institutions are responding to a growing demand for trans- healthcare, and a literature-based analysis of how trans- surgical outcomes are studied and clinically assessed. I am also developing a book project on genital injury and rehabilitation. Focused on knowledge and how it moves in the form of embodied and institutional practices, my research has been problem- rather than place-based. Working on expertise as it shapes practices of gender-making medicine, I have conducted ethnographic work in surgical clinics in the US, Northern Europe, and South America.

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Courses
  • MA
    Medical Anthropology

  • AMAWC
    Applied Medical Anthropology in Western Contexts

  • GSI
    Gender and Social Identity

  • MWBHAP
    Many Ways of Being Human: Anthropological Perspective

  • IMA
    Introduction to Medical Anthropology

  • HAT
    History of Anthropological Theory

  • BMIMA
    Bodies in Medicine: Introduction to Medical Anthropology

Grants
  • Funding agency logo
    Stanford Humanities Center External Faculty Fellowship

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2022

    $70.0K
    Active
  • Funding agency logo
    Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Social Life of TBI: The Embodied and Constructed Meaning of Moderate/Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States

    Principal Investigator (PI)

    2017

    $25.2K
News
  • Bringing Pandemic Lessons to the (Virtual) Classroom

    2020

  • Anthropologist Explores Facial Feminization Surgery, Trans- Medicine

    2017

  • UA to Host Inaugural Transgender Studies Conference

    2016

Publications (14)
Recent
  • Centering Transgender Individuals in Forensic Anthropology and Expanding Binary Sex Estimation in Casework and Research

    2021

  • Anthropology in the Face of the Contemporary

    2021

  • Trans America: A Counter-History by Barry Reay

    2020

  • Not Here: Catholic Healthcare Systems and the Refusal of Transgender Care in the United States

    2019

  • A Capable Surgeon and a Willing Electrologist: Challenges to the Expansion of Transgender Surgical Care in the United States

    2019

  • TSQ: The Surgery Issue

    2018

  • Gender, Ethnicity, and Transgender Embodiment: Interrogating Classification in Facial Feminization Surgery

    2018

  • Introduction: Reframing the Surgical

    2018

  • Formations of Femininity: Science and Aesthetics of Facial Feminization Surgery

    2017

  • Facial Gender Confirmation Surgery: Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Version 8 of the WPATH Standards of Care

    2017

  • Anatomical Authorities: On the epistemological exclusion of trans- surgical patients

    2015

  • Description of Sex Difference as Prescription for Sex Change: On the Origin of Facial Feminization Surgery

    2014

  • It Is As It Does: Genital Form and Function in Sex Reassignment Surgery

    2014

  • The Surgical Suite

    2013

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