Marcia C. Inhorn

Marcia C. Inhorn

Marcia C. Inhorn at Yale, 2009.
Born 1957
Residence New Haven, CT
Nationality United States
Education PhD, MPH
Alma mater UC Berkeley
Employer Yale University
University of Michigan
Title William K. Lanman Jr. professor
Board member of Elected Fellow, Society for Applied Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, 2007. Chair, Council on Middle East Studies, Yale University, 2008 - present. Editor, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies
Spouse(s) Kirk Hooks
Children Carl & Justine
Awards Diana Forsythe Prize for Outstanding Feminist Anthropological Research on Work, Science, and Technology, 2007. Eileen Basker Prize award for Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions. 
Website www.marciainhorn.com

Marcia Claire Inhorn is a medical anthropologist and William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University.[1] A specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, Inhorn conducts research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 20 years.

Before joining the Yale faculty in 2008, Inhorn was a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Michigan and director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Inhorn served as president of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. She has also served as Chair of Yale's Council on Middle East Studies (2008-2011)[2] and of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan (2004-2006).[3]

Research

Egypt

A specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, Inhorn has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTS) in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 20 years. She is the first anthropologist to study infertility in the non-Western world, beginning with research in the late 1980s among the urban Egyptian poor. There, she discovered the complex “quest for conception”—involving both traditional and Western biomedicine—undertaken by many infertile women in an attempt to overcome their stigmatizing childlessness.[4] She also theorized infertility as a form of “lived patriarchy” for poor women, even though many poor husbands in Egypt were supportive and loving toward their infertile wives.[5] Returning to Egypt in the mid-1990s, Inhorn examined the introduction of both in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) (a variant of IVF to overcome male infertility) in that country. She discovered the numerous structural, ideological, and practical obstacles and apprehensions faced by urban Egyptian elites in their struggles to overcome infertility through the use of ARTs. These two research projects resulted in three books on the impact of infertility, childlessness, reproductive medicine, and the globalization of ARTs to Egypt at the turn of the century.

Lebanon

Since 2000, Inhorn has undertaken three more major research projects on Middle Eastern infertility and assisted reproduction, with support of the U.S. Department of Education. Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program and the Cultural Anthropology Program of the National Science Foundation. As a Visiting Research Professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon in 2003, Inhorn examined the social impact of male infertility in the era of ICSI. Inhorn discovered that male infertility is highly prevalent in the Middle East and is probably genetically related to consanguineous (cousin) marriage. Increasingly, Middle Eastern men are viewing male infertility as a medical condition to be overcome through ICSI, and are demonstrating their “emergent masculinities” through their engagements with emerging ARTs. These ARTs include new forms of gamete donation, as well as surrogacy, which have been allowed by some Shia Islamic religious authorities in Iran and Lebanon.

Editorships

Inhorn is the current and founding editor of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS).[6] She is also associate editor for population and health of the journal Global Public Health,[7] and co-editor of the "Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality" series at Berghahn Books.[8] She is also editor or co-editor of eight volumes on medical anthropology, gender, reproduction, and the Middle East.

Publications

Books

Edited volumes

Selected book chapters

Selected journal articles

References

  1. Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
  2. Middle East Studies Council, The MacMillan Center
  3. Middle East Studies Council, The MacMillan Center
  4. Inhorn, Marcia C. (1994). Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1528-1.
  5. Inhorn, Marcia C. (1996). Infertility and Patriarchy: the Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1424-2.
  6. middle%20east%20women’s%20studies%20(amews)
  7. global%20public%20health
  8. fertility,%20reproduction,%20and%20sexuality%20series%20at%20berghahn%20books

External links

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