Ph.D. Candidate
she/they
About
Abby Arthur Smith is a qualitative and comparative-historical sociologist of morality, science, and technology (STS). Her dissertation draws on archival records from state boards that administered eugenic sterilizations in the United States from the 1920s through the 1970s. Through I.Q. tests and Rorschach interpretations, physical exams and interviews, case files made moral claims—about "defective" heredity, sexuality, mental and physical impairment, family relations, and material deprivation—measurable. Findings illustrate how moral classifications come to emerge through material and documentary practices rather than being merely applied to them.
A second, collaborative line of research concerns how infrastructure shapes lived experiences of race and disability, documenting the co-production of health disparities and identity subjectivities. Taken together, her work demonstrates how science, technology, and medicine shape—and are shaped by—ideas about the value and worth of different types of bodies.
