Monica J Casper

San Diego State University, Sociology, Faculty Member

The University of Arizona, Gender and Women's Studies, Emerita

San Diego State University, President's Office, Special Assistant on Gender-Based Violence

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My research and teaching interests include bodies/embodiment, feminist technoscience studies, medical sociology, gender and sexuality, women’s health, gender-based violence, environmental justice, cultural politics of reproduction, security and war, disability studies, trauma studies, biopolitics, and qualitative methods.

I'm author of The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery (Rutgers University Press, 1998) and Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z (Rutgers University Press, 2022); co-author of Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility (NYU Press, 2009) and The Body: Social and Cultural Dissections (Routledge, 2014); editor of Synthetic Planet: Chemical Politics and the Hazards of Modern Life (Routledge, 2003); and co-editor of Corpus: An Interdisciplinary Reader on Bodies and Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life (NYU Press, 2016).

I have published widely on women’s health topics including breast cancer, cervical cancer, the HPV vaccine, abortion, sterilization, maternal health, infant mortality, pregnancy, the placenta and environmental justice. I'm currently researching the biopolitics of elephant trauma as well as the history and cultural politics of the placenta.

With Lisa Jean Moore, I founded and co-edit the NYU Press book series, Biopolitics: Medicine, Technoscience, and Health in the 21st Century. I'm also Co-Editor and Publisher of Trivia: Voices of Feminism and Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The Feminist Wire Books, a series published by the University of Arizona Press.

I am currently Professor of Sociology and Special Assistant to the President at San Diego State University, where I also served as Dean of the College of Arts and Letters from 2020-2023.

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Books by Monica J Casper

Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z

The U.S. infant mortality rate is among the highest in the industrialized world, and Black babies... more The U.S. infant mortality rate is among the highest in the industrialized world, and Black babies are far more likely than white babies to die in their first year of life. Maternal mortality rates are also very high. Though the infant mortality rate overall has improved over the past century with public health interventions, racial disparities have not. Racism, poverty, lack of access to health care, and other causes of death have been identified, but not yet adequately addressed. The tragedy is twofold: it is undoubtedly tragic that babies die in their first year of life, and it is both tragic and unacceptable that most of these deaths are preventable. Despite the urgency of the problem, there has been little public discussion of infant loss. The question this book takes up is not why babies die; we already have many answers to this question. It is, rather, who cares that babies, mostly but not only Black and Native American babies, are dying before their first birthdays? More importantly, what are we willing to do about it? This book tracks social and cultural dimensions of infant death through 58 alphabetical entries, from Absence to ZIP Code. It centers women’s loss and grief, while also drawing attention to dimensions of infant death not often examined. It is simultaneously a sociological study of infant death, an archive of loss and grief, and a clarion call for social change.

Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life

Trauma is a universal human experience. While each person responds differently to trauma, its pre... more Trauma is a universal human experience. While each person responds differently to trauma, its presence in our lives nonetheless marks a continual thread through human history and prehistory. In Critical Trauma Studies, a diverse group of writers, activists, and scholars of sociology, anthropology, literature, and cultural studies reflects on the study of trauma and how multidisciplinary approaches lend richness and a sense of deeper understanding to this burgeoning field of inquiry. The original essays within this collection cover topics such as female suicide bombers from the Chechen Republic, singing prisoners in Iranian prison camps, sexual assault and survivor advocacy, and families facing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. As it proceeds, Critical Trauma Studies never loses sight of the way those who study trauma as an academic field, and those who experience, narrate, and remediate trauma as a personal and embodied event, inform one another. Theoretically adventurous and deeply particular, this book aims to advance trauma studies as a discipline that transcends intellectual boundaries, to be mapped but also to be unmoored from conceptual and practical imperatives. Remaining embedded in lived experiences and material realities, Critical Trauma Studies frames the field as both richly unbounded and yet clearly defined, historical, and evidence-based.

Monica J Casper

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