MAGH Lecture: Pregnant citizens, failing states, and the trouble with citizenship
Posted: 11/7/2016 (Local Events)
In Malawi, where maternal death has been politically and socially contentious for many years, expert narratives about maternal mortality proliferate. Many kinds of uncertainties contribute to these divergent narratives. An examination of these stories, and the struggles over legitimacy in which they are wielded, suggests the limits of medical anthropologists’ theoretical constructs of citizenship–biological, biomedical, or therapeutic.
Claire Wendland is Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on the globalization of biomedicine, reproduction, and sexuality in Africa. In 2010, Claire Wendland published A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School (University of Chicago Press). Tracing the experiences of medical students learning to become doctors in Malawi, Claire Wendland argues that their responses challenge longstanding assumptions about biomedicine and African healing. In her current work, Claire Wendland analyzes linkages between reproduction, childbirth, and death in southeast Africa. Her work has been published in a wide range of journals, such as Current Anthropology, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and American Anthropologist.
Date: 11/09/2016
Time: 3:30 - 4:50 PM PT
Location: University of Washington, 120 Smith Hall