Date: Friday 2nd July 2010
Time: 6pm to 7.30pm (followed by a reception)
Venue: London School of Economics and Political Science, New Academic Building, Room: LG01
Speaker: Prof Marcia C. Inhorn, Yale University
Please register by emailing Rachel Irwin, r.irwin@lse.ac.uk|

Lecture capture: Please click on the link below if you would like to see a video of this past event (LSE students and staff only):

Globalization and Gametes: Reproductive "Tourism", Islamic Bioethics, and Middle Eastern Modernity|

Podcast: Please click on the following link if you would like to hear a podcast of the event:

Globalization and Gametes: Reproductive "Tourism", Islamic Bioethics, and Middle Eastern Modernity|

Summary:
So-called "reproductive tourism" has been defined as the search for assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and human gametes (ova, sperm, embryos) across national and international borders. Global health policy-makers are deeply concerned about the implications of reproductive "outsourcing" as a global health equity issue. In her presentation, Globalization and Gametes: Reproductive "Tourism." Islamic Bioethics, and Middle Eastern Modernity, Dr. Marcia Inhorn develops the concepts of "reproscapes," "reproflows," and "reproductive exile" to describe the global circulation of actors, technologies, money, media, ideas, biological substances, and human body parts, all moving in complicated manners across geographical landscapes. Focusing on both the Shia- and Sunni-dominant Muslim countries of the Middle East, she explores the Islamic "local moral worlds" which inform the movements of reproductive actors in search of human gametes.

Biosketch:
Marcia C. Inhorn, PhD, MPH, is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Department of Anthropology and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. She also serves as Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies. Before coming to Yale in 2008, Inhorn was a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Michigan and president of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. A specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, Inhorn has conducted 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. She is the author of three books on the subject, Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt (Routledge, 2003), Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt (U Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions (U Pennsylvania Press, 1994), which have won the AAA's Eileen Basker Prize and the Diana Forsythe Prize for outstanding feminist anthropological research in the areas of gender, health, science, technology, and biomedicine. She is also the editor or co-editor of six books, including Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society (Oxford U Press, 2009), Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium (Berghahn Books, 2007), and Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (U California Press, 2002). She has been a visiting faculty member at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, where she has conducted studies on "Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies" and "Globalization and Reproductive Tourism in the Arab World." She is the founding editor of JMEWS (Journal of Middle East Women's Studies) of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies (which will be coming to Yale in July 2010), and co-editor of the Berghahn Book series on "Fertility, Sexuality and Reproduction." In Fall 2010, she will be the first Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Visiting Professor at the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Cambridge.