Research
Research Fields
Feminist Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine * Cultural Studies * Media Studies * Asian/American Studies
Research Interests
Gender, race and science
Empire and medicine
Global studies of public health
Biosafety and Biosecurity
Disease control and disaster
preparedness
Current Project
Research Project: Chinese Medicine as a Framework for Liberation
I am currently interviewing activist-practitioners of Chinese medicine on how they envision Chinese medicine and its role in gender and racial justice, disability justice, reproductive justice, healing justice, and other struggles for liberation. Contemporary practitioners tell us about the unique ways that Chinese medicine can give us the tools to heal from oppression and the frameworks to build worlds based on interconnection, care, and radical acceptance. I hope that the stories I share can provide a road map for others who would like to use Chinese medicine as a tool for liberation; even more broadly, I hope to reach anyone interested in putting healing at the center of our movements for collective liberation.
Recently Completed Book Project
Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (book forthcoming with Rutgers University Press): Bio-Imperialism examines an understudied dimension of the war on terror—US focus on bioterror and germ threats. The book shows that the US sensationalized these threats to justify increased US ability to wage bio-imperialism, i.e., the ability to control global biological, medical, and health resources. The book critiques the role that bioscience and public health fields played in this militaristic project, and the resulting post-9/11 cultural narratives of Arab/Muslim mad science, fragile US immunity, and other gendered and racialized hallucinations of an aggrieved US empire.
