Co-sponsored Event: Feminist Science Studies. HPV and the Expanding Sexual Politics of Cancer Prevention

Laura Mamo, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Health Education and Health Equity Institute, San Francisco State University 

About the talk:  This talk examines gender and sexual politics shaping contemporary contours of cancer prevention in light of scientific knowledge that infection with the human papillomavirus, This talk examines this new way of apprehending cancer by foregrounding gender and sexual politics found in HPV vaccination, anal cancer research, and depictions of what some regard as a rising throat cancer epidemic. The talk is based on preliminary findings from ethnographic research with scientists, health practitioners, and publics around these emergent epistemologies and practices of cancer prevention.

 About the Author: Laura Mamo received her PhD in sociology from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2002. She is currently Health Equity Associate Professor of Health Education at San Francisco State University. Her teaching and research interests are in feminist science studies with a focus on women’s health, LGBT health, and sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice. She is the author of Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience (Duke University Press, 2007) and Co-editor of Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the U.S. (Duke University Press, 2010).