N Valdez
Biographic Data
| ID | 21333 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Valdez |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Valdez |
| SIGNATURE | VALDEZ N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wellesley College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8986-4803 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Exposure: Racialized Birth Trauma and Epigenetic Inheritance
How can trauma, specifically, racialized birth trauma, be passed on or reproduced across generations? This essay explores the intersections of trauma research, including forms of birth trauma and racism, alongside the research on epigenetic inheritance, to understand the reproduction of racialized birth trauma. Drawing on preliminary research conducted with scientists and a close reading of Davis's concept of anti-bodies, I argue that it is impor…
Ask a Feminist: Reproduction in the Age of Epigenetics; A Conversation with Natali Valdez, Sarah S. Richardson, and Rene Almeling
In this episode of Ask a Feminist, recorded in February 2022, Natali Valdez, Sarah Richardson, and Rene Almeling discuss questions of reproduction in the age of epigenetics. As a dialogue between scholars working in and across the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, gender studies, and science and technology studies, the conversation examines a variety of interdisciplinary dimensions of reproduction and epigenetics. Together, the authors …
The anti-gender threat: An ethical, democratic, and scientific imperative for NIH research/ers
My(white)BodyMyChoice
This article explores the circulation of #MyBodyMyChoice in a series of deeply divisive political debates - abortion rights and mask wearing during COVID-19. We trace the appropriation of this slogan for differing ideological purposes, and its shifts from collective political action concerning pro-choice to the rights of individuals to refuse to comply with mask mandates. Underpinning the values of each is a white liberal racism that operates to …
Duo-ethnographic Methods: A Feminist Take on Collaborative Research
Duo-ethnography is a collaborative methodology in which participants juxtapose their experiences around a topic to parse multiple perspectives. It explicitly positions ethnographers as sources of information, not data collectors. This method has been used to explore racial identities, class dynamics, decolonizing pedagogies, and gender in academic life. Building on previous work, we consider our contribution to be articulating duo-ethnography as …
Studying Up from the Margins in a white-supremacist-cis-hetero-patriarchal-capitalist culture1
This article examines the citational politics of teaching, learning, and doing ethnographic projects that study up in medical anthropology by examining the references that are often cited, the ones that exist but are not widely circulated, and the gaps in between. I take a reflexive approach to understanding how my positionality shaped my path toward studying up. In so doing, I reveal the complex tensions of implementing ethnographic methods in s…
The Politics of Postgenomic Reproduction: Exploring Pregnant Narratives from within a Clinical Trial
There are more large-scale pregnancy trials that implement lifestyle interventions than ever before; yet, there is a dearth of information on pregnant peoples' experiences in such trials. Contemporary lifestyle pregnancy trials draw on epigenetics and DOHaD research to design and justify prenatal interventions on the material environment to reduce health risks in future generations. This article draws on ethnographic data from a prenatal trial in…
Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era
Conclusion: The Afterbirth of Foreclosure
Reproducing Whiteness: Race, Food, and Epigenetics
Centering Race and Racism in Reproduction
Race is a salient yet problematic category of everyday life that plays a key role in understanding social and biological reproduction. Yet too rarely is race centered as an analytic to explore repr
Improvising Race: Clinical Trials and Racial Classification
In this article, I explore how ethnicity codes are used in a prenatal trial in the United Kingdom. Here, ethnicity codes are generative objects that relationally cohere across staff, surveys and pregnant participants to create racial improvisations. I examine the origins and adaptations of ethnicity codes across three ethnographic and historical cases at micro and macro scales. The improvisation of race is a window into the movements, negotiation…
The Redistribution of Reproductive Responsibility: On the Epigenetics of "Environment" in Prenatal Interventions
The rapidly shifting field of epigenetics has expanded scientific understanding of how environmental conditions affect gene expression and development. This article focuses on two ongoing clinical trials-one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom-that have used epigenetics as the conceptual basis for testing the relationship between nutrition and obesity during pregnancy. Drawing on ethnographic research, I highlight the different way…
In Defence of Social Science: U.K. 2015: A Review of the 2015 CfSS Report: 'The Business of People: The Significance of Social Science over the Next Decade'
In 1954, C. Dollard wrote an article in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology titled ‘In the Defense of Social Science’. In 1967, W. Grundy wrote another article in the journal of Social Studies with the same title. A report from the New York Times used the same title in 1985 to highlight how neglected the social sciences are in the American education system (Maeroff 1985). Most recently, in 2012 B. Maguth also draws on the same title t…
La política exterior de una revolución
This article introduces the feminist praxis of duoethnography as a way to examine the COVID era. As a group of diverse, junior, midcareer, and senior feminist scholars, we developed a methodology to critically reflect on our positions in our institutions and social worlds. As a method, duoethnography emphasizes the dialogical intimacy that can form through anthropological work. While autoethnography draws on individual daily lives to make sense o…
The Redistribution of Reproductive Responsibility: On the Epigenetics of "Environment" in Prenatal Interventions
The rapidly shifting field of epigenetics has expanded scientific understanding of how environmental conditions affect gene expression and development. This article focuses on two ongoing clinical trials-one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom-that have used epigenetics as the conceptual basis for testing the relationship between nutrition and obesity during pregnancy. Drawing on ethnographic research, I highlight the different way…
Centering Race and Racism in Reproduction
Race is a salient yet problematic category of everyday life that plays a key role in understanding social and biological reproduction. Yet too rarely is race centered as an analytic to explore repr
Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era
Improvising Race: Clinical Trials and Racial Classification
In this article, I explore how ethnicity codes are used in a prenatal trial in the United Kingdom. Here, ethnicity codes are generative objects that relationally cohere across staff, surveys and pregnant participants to create racial improvisations. I examine the origins and adaptations of ethnicity codes across three ethnographic and historical cases at micro and macro scales. The improvisation of race is a window into the movements, negotiation…
Studying Up from the Margins in a white-supremacist-cis-hetero-patriarchal-capitalist culture1
This article examines the citational politics of teaching, learning, and doing ethnographic projects that study up in medical anthropology by examining the references that are often cited, the ones that exist but are not widely circulated, and the gaps in between. I take a reflexive approach to understanding how my positionality shaped my path toward studying up. In so doing, I reveal the complex tensions of implementing ethnographic methods in s…
The Politics of Postgenomic Reproduction: Exploring Pregnant Narratives from within a Clinical Trial
There are more large-scale pregnancy trials that implement lifestyle interventions than ever before; yet, there is a dearth of information on pregnant peoples' experiences in such trials. Contemporary lifestyle pregnancy trials draw on epigenetics and DOHaD research to design and justify prenatal interventions on the material environment to reduce health risks in future generations. This article draws on ethnographic data from a prenatal trial in…
Reproducing Whiteness: Race, Food, and Epigenetics
The anti-gender threat: An ethical, democratic, and scientific imperative for NIH research/ers
Exposure: Racialized Birth Trauma and Epigenetic Inheritance
How can trauma, specifically, racialized birth trauma, be passed on or reproduced across generations? This essay explores the intersections of trauma research, including forms of birth trauma and racism, alongside the research on epigenetic inheritance, to understand the reproduction of racialized birth trauma. Drawing on preliminary research conducted with scientists and a close reading of Davis's concept of anti-bodies, I argue that it is impor…
La política exterior de una revolución
This article introduces the feminist praxis of duoethnography as a way to examine the COVID era. As a group of diverse, junior, midcareer, and senior feminist scholars, we developed a methodology to critically reflect on our positions in our institutions and social worlds. As a method, duoethnography emphasizes the dialogical intimacy that can form through anthropological work. While autoethnography draws on individual daily lives to make sense o…
In Defence of Social Science: U.K. 2015: A Review of the 2015 CfSS Report: 'The Business of People: The Significance of Social Science over the Next Decade'
In 1954, C. Dollard wrote an article in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology titled ‘In the Defense of Social Science’. In 1967, W. Grundy wrote another article in the journal of Social Studies with the same title. A report from the New York Times used the same title in 1985 to highlight how neglected the social sciences are in the American education system (Maeroff 1985). Most recently, in 2012 B. Maguth also draws on the same title t…
The Redistribution of Reproductive Responsibility: On the Epigenetics of "Environment" in Prenatal Interventions
The rapidly shifting field of epigenetics has expanded scientific understanding of how environmental conditions affect gene expression and development. This article focuses on two ongoing clinical trials-one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom-that have used epigenetics as the conceptual basis for testing the relationship between nutrition and obesity during pregnancy. Drawing on ethnographic research, I highlight the different way…
Centering Race and Racism in Reproduction
Race is a salient yet problematic category of everyday life that plays a key role in understanding social and biological reproduction. Yet too rarely is race centered as an analytic to explore repr
Improvising Race: Clinical Trials and Racial Classification
In this article, I explore how ethnicity codes are used in a prenatal trial in the United Kingdom. Here, ethnicity codes are generative objects that relationally cohere across staff, surveys and pregnant participants to create racial improvisations. I examine the origins and adaptations of ethnicity codes across three ethnographic and historical cases at micro and macro scales. The improvisation of race is a window into the movements, negotiation…
Reproducing Whiteness: Race, Food, and Epigenetics
Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era
Conclusion: The Afterbirth of Foreclosure
The Politics of Postgenomic Reproduction: Exploring Pregnant Narratives from within a Clinical Trial
There are more large-scale pregnancy trials that implement lifestyle interventions than ever before; yet, there is a dearth of information on pregnant peoples' experiences in such trials. Contemporary lifestyle pregnancy trials draw on epigenetics and DOHaD research to design and justify prenatal interventions on the material environment to reduce health risks in future generations. This article draws on ethnographic data from a prenatal trial in…
My(white)BodyMyChoice
This article explores the circulation of #MyBodyMyChoice in a series of deeply divisive political debates - abortion rights and mask wearing during COVID-19. We trace the appropriation of this slogan for differing ideological purposes, and its shifts from collective political action concerning pro-choice to the rights of individuals to refuse to comply with mask mandates. Underpinning the values of each is a white liberal racism that operates to …
Duo-ethnographic Methods: A Feminist Take on Collaborative Research
Duo-ethnography is a collaborative methodology in which participants juxtapose their experiences around a topic to parse multiple perspectives. It explicitly positions ethnographers as sources of information, not data collectors. This method has been used to explore racial identities, class dynamics, decolonizing pedagogies, and gender in academic life. Building on previous work, we consider our contribution to be articulating duo-ethnography as …
Studying Up from the Margins in a white-supremacist-cis-hetero-patriarchal-capitalist culture1
This article examines the citational politics of teaching, learning, and doing ethnographic projects that study up in medical anthropology by examining the references that are often cited, the ones that exist but are not widely circulated, and the gaps in between. I take a reflexive approach to understanding how my positionality shaped my path toward studying up. In so doing, I reveal the complex tensions of implementing ethnographic methods in s…
The anti-gender threat: An ethical, democratic, and scientific imperative for NIH research/ers
Exposure: Racialized Birth Trauma and Epigenetic Inheritance
How can trauma, specifically, racialized birth trauma, be passed on or reproduced across generations? This essay explores the intersections of trauma research, including forms of birth trauma and racism, alongside the research on epigenetic inheritance, to understand the reproduction of racialized birth trauma. Drawing on preliminary research conducted with scientists and a close reading of Davis's concept of anti-bodies, I argue that it is impor…
Ask a Feminist: Reproduction in the Age of Epigenetics; A Conversation with Natali Valdez, Sarah S. Richardson, and Rene Almeling
In this episode of Ask a Feminist, recorded in February 2022, Natali Valdez, Sarah Richardson, and Rene Almeling discuss questions of reproduction in the age of epigenetics. As a dialogue between scholars working in and across the fields of anthropology, history, sociology, gender studies, and science and technology studies, the conversation examines a variety of interdisciplinary dimensions of reproduction and epigenetics. Together, the authors …
Sociology (12 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Race, Genetics, and Society (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Biology (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Ecology (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works)