CJS Postdoctoral Fellow
About
Maura Stephens-Chu has served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Miami University in Oxford, OH. She received her PhD and MA in Anthropology from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. She specializes in medical and cultural anthropology, with an emphasis on embodied experiences of menstruation in contemporary Japan. Broadly, Maura’s multidisciplinary and intersectional research includes theoretical and methodological approaches from anthropology, Japanese studies, gender studies, history, and science and technology studies. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Tokyo, Japan, on young women’s perceptions, education, and personal experiences of menstruation and commercial menstrual products. Her historical analysis of Japanese menstrual taboos, “From Sacred to Secret: Tracing Changes in Views of Menstruation in Japan,” can be found in the open access journal, Silva Iaponicarum. Currently, Maura is researching the formation of both layperson and medical understandings of conditions that fall under the umbrella of menstrual “irregularity,” including endometriosis, amenorrhea, and severe dysmenorrhea.
