Write an academic book review of a medical anthropology ethnography (or an approved book) on a topic related to the class.
Substantive requirements
An academic book review of this format needs to do three things. First, it needs to summarize the arguments and evidence of the book. Second, you need to develop your own arguments about and critical assessment of the book. Third, you need to situate the book in relation to the material we’ve covered in class and the larger field of medical anthropology as you understand it.
Length and format
The citation convention in anthropology is Chicago style. Please include works cited at the end.
Advice and a note on book selection
A good place to start is to look for already existing academic reviews of the book you’ve chosen. While you of course need to produce your own review, this can give you a sense of how anthropologists in the discipline make sense of the book, how they summarize its arguments and evidence, and how they situate it within the theoretical and active research questions of the field.
However, be careful not to follow what you see in published reviews too closely. By convention, nearly all published academic book reviews are positive—yours does not need to be—and for this assignment, we are not looking for you to make a recommendation on the usefulness of the book for teaching or research.
The book I chose is: The Woman in the Body by Emily Martin
Tie the review in with Reproduction, gender, and the body
THINGS TO TIE THE REVIEW IN WITH ANY OF THESE READINGS BELOW (NO OUTSIDE SOURCES BESIDES THE BOOK AND SOURCES LISTED BELOW:
Thursday, October 28
● Baer, Hans A., Merrill Singer, and Ida Susser. 2013. “Chapter 6: Reproduction, Biotechnologies, and inequality,” in Medical Anthropology and the World System, Critical Perspectives 3rd ed. Praeger. (pg.167-197)
● Martin, Emily. 1991. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16 (3): 485–501.
● Rapp, Rayna. 1993. “Amniocentesis in Sociocultural Perspective.” Journal of Genetic Counseling 2 (3):183–96.
Recommended
● Roberts, Dorothy E. 2009. “Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 34 (4): 783–804.
Week 10: Gender and the body
● Thursday November 4
● Martin, Emily. 2001. “Chapter 3” in The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction:With a New Introduction. 2001 ed. Boston: Beacon Press.
● Plemons, Eric. 2019. “Gender, Ethnicity, and Transgender Embodiment: Interrogating
Classification in Facial Feminization Surgery.” Body & Society 25 (1): 3–28.
● Edmonds, Alexander. 2010. Pretty Modern: Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil.
Durham, N.C: Duke University Press. Excerpt.
● Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Margaret M. Lock. 1987. “The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1 (1): 6–41.
Last Completed Projects
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