Reproducing Race: Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization

A talk by Khiara M. Bridges, JD, PhD
Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Anthropology Boston University

Free and open to the public.

In her groundbreaking book, Reproducing Race, an ethnography of pregnancy and birth at a large New York City public hospital, Dr. Khiara M. Bridges explores the role of race in the medical setting.

In her talk, Dr. Bridges will investigate how race – commonly seen as biological in the medical world – is socially constructed among women dependent on the public healthcare system for prenatal care and childbirth.

Weaving ethnographic evidence into broader discussions of Medicaid and racial/ethnic disparities in infant and maternal mortality, Bridges will shine new light on the politics of healthcare for the socially and economically marginalized – demonstrating how the “medicalization” of social problems reproduces racial/ethnic stereotypes and governs the bodies of poor women of color.

Dr. Khiara M. Bridges holds a B.A. from Spelman College, J.D. from Columbia Law School, and Ph.D., with distinction, from Columbia University’s Department of Anthropology.