Research Areas

History of Medicine, Gender Studies, Representations of the Biological Clock, Changing Fertility Patterns and Family Structures, Bioethics and Reproductive Technologies, Sociobiology, Narrative Theory

Selected Publications and Working Papers:

“Consuming Maternal Instinct: Cooperative Breeding and the Disestablishment of the Biological Clock.” In M. L. Fisher, J. Garcia, R. Chang (Editors). Evolution's Empress: How Females Shape Adaptation. Oxford University Press, New York, 2013.

“Long War between the Sexes,” Times Literary Supplement, October 5, 2012. Co-Lead.  On theories of evolution, sexonomics and paternity leave. Arts & Letters Daily, 3QuarksDaily, The Browser.  http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1139342.ece

Tr into Hebrew: Cacalist Magazine, 10/10/12: http://ideas.calcalist.co.il/?p=1233

“The Girl with the Father Tattoo”—Rethinking father-daughter relations (on Title IX and 21^st century permutations), Los Angeles Review of Books, December, 2011. The Browser, India Times, etc.

“Artificial People”—on how advances in science rekindle old myths and fears. Times Literary Supplement  (TLS), May 12, 2011. Co-Lead  (On Philip Ball’s Unnatural: The Heretical Idea of Making Artificial People.). American Scientist: Scientists’ Bookshelf Monthly Vol. 9, no.5; The Browser, May 2011.

“Social Darwinism”—A critique of Robin Dunbar’s ‘How Many Friends Does one Person Need?  Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 24 , 2011. Arts and Letters Daily.

“Reproductive and career timing: do the daughters of baby boomers plan to emulate or deviate from their parents’ timing strategies?  On-going Ethnography/Working Paper on the articulation of Strategic versus Organic Timing among an undergraduate student population. 2012.

“Gender politics, reproductive timing and upward mobility among a sample of Hmong college undergrads.” On-going Ethnography/Working Paper, 2012.

Review Article: “Untying the Knot: Disestablishing Marriage,” The European Legacy, Volume 17, no. 3. June 2012.    (PHIL PAPERS—2012).

“On Melvin Konner’s ‘The Evolution of Childhood,’” The Times Literary Supplement, September 29, 2010.  Lead Article.  An analysis of the likely evolutionary levers for the unusual shape of human childhood.

"Choice for Mothers"--Decision theory and surrogacy, The Times Literary Supplement, June 3, 2010.

“Annie Leibovtiz’s Queer Consumption of Motherhood,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 37(2). Fall/Winter 2009/10.

“Mothers Without Others" (Review of primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s Mothers and Others), Times Literary Supplement. Lead article. May 22, 2009.

“La stratégie des bébés” In BOOKS: L’Actualité par les livres du Monde. Septembre 2009 (Toulouse). Numéro 8. (translation, altered somewhat, of above). Online version: http://www.booksmag.fr/magazine/a/la-strategie-des-bebes.html

“Professional Women, Timing, and Reproductive Strategies in the 1990s,” Lead article in edited volume by Andrea O’Reilly entitled Feminist Mothering (SUNY Press, 2008).

“Genetic engineering, and the case against perfection,” The Times Literary Supplement, April 17, 2008.

“Bad Harvests” (on IVF and the closeted practice of selective reduction of embryos in utero). The Times Literary Supplement, February, 2008.

“Cradle or grave?” The Times Literary Supplement, May, 2007. Lead article.  Also reprinted in TLS Highlights. On the politics of birth practices historically; how one royal case of cephalo-pelvic disproportion launched the Victorian Age.

“Gender and Technology: A historical overview,” The European Legacy (Routledge Press), Volume 11, Number 7, Winter 2006/2007.

“Postmodern Families: Buying Mr. Darcy,” The Times Literary Supplement, January, 2007. Lead article. Reprinted in TLS Highlights (social sciences).

Other:

-Science Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books (current)
-Post-doc and lecturer (Stanford)
-Co-chair of Scholars' Program, Institute for Research on Women and Gender (Stanford)
-Visiting Scholar, Beatrice Bain Research Group (Berkeley)