Marcia Inhorn appointed Chair for Council on Middle East Studies

The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale is pleased to announce that Marcia Inhorn, the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, has been appointed as Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies (CMES), to complete a full three-year term in June 2022.

“Marcia has very ably served as CMES Chair this year,” said Steven Wilkinson, Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center. “We are delighted she has agreed to stay on, given her deep knowledge of and strong support for our Title VI center as well as all the other CMES activities.”

Professor Inhorn’s research interests revolve around gender and health, science and technology studies (STS), feminist theory (including masculinity studies), religion and bioethics, globalization and global health, cultures of biomedicine and ethnomedicine, stigma and human suffering, the health costs of conflict, especially for refugees and forced migrants. Over the past 30 years, Inhorn has conducted multi-sited research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America. She is the author of six books on the subject, including America’s Arab Refugees: Vulnerability and Health on the Margins (Stanford U Press, 2018); Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai (Duke U Press, 2015); The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East (Princeton U Press, 2012), Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt (Routledge, 2003); Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt (U Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions (U Pennsylvania Press, 1994). The books have won multiple awards, including the American Anthropological Association’s Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology, the Eileen Basker Prize of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and the Diana Forsythe Prize for outstanding feminist anthropological research in the areas of gender, health, science, technology, and biomedicine. Inhorn is also the primary editor or co-editor of ten volumes, including Reconceiving Muslim Men: Love and Marriage, Family and Care in Precarious Times (Berghahn Books, 2018); Globalized Fatherhood (Berghahn Books, 2014); Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Histories, Activisms, and Futures (Duke U Press, 2012); Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Sunni and Shia Perspectives (Berghahn Books, 2012); Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society (Oxford U Press, 2009); Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity, and Reproduction (Berghahn Books, 2009); Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium (Berghahn Books, 2007); and Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (U California Press, 2002).

As a Middle Eastern scholar, Inhorn has been a visiting professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. With research support from Fulbright-Hays and the National Science Foundation, she has conducted multiple ethnographic research projects in the Middle East, including “Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies” and “Globalization and Reproductive Tourism in the Arab World.” Her most recent National Science Foundation study focuses on “The Egg Freezing Revolution? Gender, Technology, and Oocyte Cryopreservation in the U.S. and Middle East.” From 2018-2021, she is co-leading a Wellcome Trust research project on “Changing (In)Fertilities” with Professor Sarah Franklin of the University of Cambridge.

Inhorn is the founding editor of JMEWS (Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies), the professional journal of the Association of Middle East Women’s Studies (Middle East Studies Association); associate editor of Global Public Health; and co-editor for the Berghahn Book series on “Fertility, Sexuality, and Reproduction.” In 2014, she won the JMEWS Book Prize for The New Arab Man, as well as the JMEWS Scholarly Achievement Award. In 2013, she received the Middle East Distinguished Scholar Award of the American Anthropological Association’s Middle East Section, and the MASA Graduate Student Mentor Award of the AAA’s Society for Medical Anthropology.