Education:

Research & Activities:

Since 1993, I have undertaken ethnographic research on health and gender in Russia as an arena for understanding the broader social and political changes in that country since the end of state socialism. Most specifically, my work has examined Russia's health care reforms, debates and policies on reproduction and demography, sex education,  and the daily struggles of women and men to secure well-being as privatization expands in official and unofficial ways. This research contributes to feminist and medical anthropological scholarship linking reproductive politics with transformations of the state and citizenship. My approach brings into view a range of actors and levels of analysis, from international development consultants to state policy makers, demographic experts, clinic- based professionals, community activists, and laypersons, as well as the interactions between them.

I have recently written on the ways cultural notions of justice in post-Soviet Russia are linked with historically-rooted constructions of social difference. In one article (2009), I examine how popular narratives of Soviet history based on Mikhail Bulgakov's story, Heart of a Dog, have articulated visions of middle-class privilege as central to moral revival in the aftermath of the Soviet Union.  A forthcoming volume co-edited with Elena Trubina (Ural State University), examines concepts of "diversity" in Russia as linked with both Soviet nationality politics and the post-Soviet tensions of market economics.

Selected Publications:

2009 "Tracing Landscapes of the Past in Class Subjectivity: Practices of Memory and Distinction in Marketizing Russia" American Ethnologist 36(1): 79-95.

2005 Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics of Intervention ( Indiana University Press).

2004 " 'Change Yourself and the Whole World Will Become Kinder': Russian Activists for Reproductive Health and the Limits of Claims Making for Women" Medical Anthropology Quarterly 18(3): 281-304.

2003 "Anthropology, Demography, and the Search for a Critical Analysis of Fertility: Insights from Russia" American Anthropologist 105(2):289-301.

2000 "Health Development Meets the End of State Socialism: Visions of Democratization, Women's Health, and Social Well-Being for Contemporary Russia" Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 24: 77-100.

1999 "Sexuality Education in Russia: Defining Pleasure and Danger for a Fledgling Democratic Society" Social Science and Medicine 49(6): 801-814.