Dana-ain Davis
Dána-Ain Davis is Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College and on the faculty of the PhD Programs in Anthropology and Critical Psychology. She is the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the CUNY Graduate Center.
In the last decade, Davis has focused her attention on reproduction, race and technologies that assist in reproduction. She has written several articles addressing issues of reproduction and racism including, “Obstetric Racism: The Racial Politics of Pregnancy, Labor, and Birthing,” (2019); “Trump, Race, and Reproduction in the Afterlife of Slavery” (2019); “Feminist Politics, Racialized Imagery, and Social Control: Reproductive Injustice in the Age of Obama” with Beth E. Richie and LaTosha Traylor (2017); “The Bone Collectors” (2016); and, “The Politics of Reproduction: The Troubling Case of Nadya Suleman” (2009). She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books, most recently Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press 2019). The book received the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology; The Senior Book Prize from the Association of Feminist Anthropology; was named a Finalist for the 2020 PROSE Award in the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology category, given by the Association of American Publishers. The Victor Turner Ethnographic Writing Award Committee of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology awarded the book an Honorable Mention.
Davis is the recipient of several awards the most recent being the American Anthropological Association’s Gender Equity Award. She also received a Brocher Foundation Residency Fellowship in Switzerland and was named the Association of Marquette University Women Chair in Humanistic Studies at Marquette University. Davis is also a doula and co-founded the Art of Childbirth with doula/midwife Nubia Earth-Martin, that offers free birth education workshops that incorporate artistic expressions
Davis has been engaged in social justice, particularly reproductive and racial justice. Over the last 30 years she has worked with a number of national reproductive justice organizations including; the New York City Department of Health’s Sexual and Reproductive Justice initiative; and Scholars for Social Justice, Civil Liberties Public Policy (Amherst, MA); National Institute for Reproductive Health; National Network of Abortion Funds, and most recently served on the New York State Governor’s Task Force on Maternal Mortality and Disparate Racial Outcomes and currently serves on the Birth Equity Collaborative in San Francisco, CA.
In addition to Reproductive Injustice, she is the author, co-author, or co-editor of four books including: Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform: Between a Rock and Hard Place (2006); Black Genders and Sexualities with Shaka McGlotten (2012); Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America with Christa Craven (2013); Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges and Possibilities with Christa Craven (First Edition 2016; Second Edition 2022).
Selected Publications:
“No Beached Whales”, Souls, April-June 2009
”The Politics of Reproduction: The Troubling Case of Nadya Suleman and Assisted Reproductive Technology”, Transforming Anthropology, 2009
