Ellen Lewin's major research interests center on motherhood, reproduction, and sexuality, particularly as these are played out in American cultures. Over the course of her career, she has completed studies that focus on low-income Latina immigrants in San Francisco, lesbian mothers, and lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies in the US. She is now completing a book on gay fathers in the United States, based on research conducted in California and in Chicago.

As a scholar working at the juncture of feminist, cultural, and medical anthropology, Lewin's work has long concerned the ways in which women make sense of the multiple identities they derive from ethnicity, race, and class, sexual orientation, and maternal status. In lesbian and gay studies her work has focused on the construction of community in American cultural contexts, and, in response to recent debates in feminist and queer theory, to devising more nuanced understandings of concepts of resistance and accommodation. She has also maintained an active interest in women's experience in the health care system, particularly in terms of the ways in which patients and providers negotiate access to reproductive care.

Ellen Lewin's publications include Lesbian Mothers: Accounts of Gender in American Culture and Recognizing Ourselves: Lesbian and Gay Ceremonies of Commitment. She is also the editor of Inventing Lesbian Cultures in America, and the co-editor of Women, Health and Healing: Toward a New Perspective (with Virginia Olesen), Out in the Field: Reflections of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists , Out in Theory: The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay Anthropology (both with William Leap), and Feminist Anthropology:  A Reader.  A third edited volume (with William Leap), Out in Public:  Lesbian and Gay Anthropology Confronts the Real World, is forthcoming, as is Dreaming the Family:  Gay Men and Fatherhood in America.


COURSES:

Introduction to Women's Studies
Feminist Theory
Women, Health, and Healing
Mothers and Motherhood
The Politics of Reproduction
Feminist Anthropology
Feminist Ethnography
Feminist Medical Anthropology
Foundations for Feminist Inquiry

© 2002 The University of Iowa. All rights reserved.

For questions and comments relating to this site, please contact theWomen's Studies webmaster