The Medicine & Its Objects Workshop Presents:
“Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era”
Dr. Natali Valdez | Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies, Wellesley College
Discussant: Stephanie Palazzo | PhD Candidate, Comparative Human Development, UChicago
*Wednesday, March 30th from 12:00-1:30pm CT* (note altered time)
Hybrid: Zoom and Cobb 107
Please email Megan MacGregor (mmacgregor@uchicago.edu) to RSVP and receive the texts and Zoom information.
Epigenetics, the study of heritable changes in gene expression, has been heralded as one of the most promising new fields of scientific inquiry. Current large-scale studies selectively draw on epigenetics to connect behavioral choices made by pregnant people, such as diet and exercise, to health risks for future generations. As the first ethnography of its kind, Weighing the Future examines the sociopolitical implications of ongoing pregnancy trials in the United States and the United Kingdom, illuminating how processes of scientific knowledge production are linked to capitalism, surveillance, and environmental reproduction. Natali Valdez argues that a focus on individual behavior rather than social environments ignores the vital impacts of systemic racism. The environments we imagine to shape our genes, bodies, and future health are intimately tied to race, gender, and structures of inequality. This groundbreaking book makes the case that science, and how we translate it, is a reproductive project that requires feminist vigilance. Instead of fixating on a future at risk, this book brings attention to the present at stake.
