Racial inequalities in health have a long and sordid history in this country, widening during the pandemic and amidst recent policy and court decisions. This Conversation with Dana-Ain Davis, Steven W. Thrasher, and Zakiya Luna takes up that history to lay bare those historic inequities in access to health care, reproductive services and public inattention to Black death. Our discussants will use that history to help us see and better understand the fight for reproductive justice, health equity, and Black life during our ongoing pandemic times. This Conversation will be moderated by the co-organizers of the Conversations in Black Freedom Studies series, Robyn Spencer and Jeanne Theoharis.

THE SPEAKERS
Dana-Ain Davis is Professor of Urban Studies and Anthropology and the director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the Graduate Center. In the last decade, Davis has focused her attention on reproduction, race and the technologies that assist in reproduction. She has written several articles addressing issues of reproduction and racism including, “The Politics of Reproduction: The Troubling Case of Nadya Suleman”; “Obstetric Racism: The Racial Politics of Pregnancy, Labor, and Birthing”; and “The Bone Collectors.”

She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books, the most recent being Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth. Reproductive Injustice received the 2020 Honorable Mention for the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing; was a finalist for the 2020 PROSE AWARD, given by the Association of American Publishers; and is listed as one of seven books on anti-racism in New York Magazine. In Reproductive Injustice, Davis examines medical racism in the lives of professional Black women who have given birth prematurely. The book shows that race confounds the perception that class is root of adverse birth outcomes and lifts up the role that birth workers—midwives, doulas, and birth advocates—play in addressing Black women’s birth outcomes.

Zakiya Luna is Dean's Distinguished Professorial Scholar in the Department of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research is in the areas of social change, sociology of law, health and inequality. Specifically, she is interested in social movements, human rights and reproduction with an emphasis on the effects of intersecting inequalities within and across these sites.

Dr. Luna recently published Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice , which was named by Oprah Daily as one of the "The 12 Books You Need to Read Post the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade Smackdown." She also co-edited Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis with Whitney Pirtle. Dr. Luna was the lead author of the Reproductive Justice review article in the 2013 volume of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science. She is also co-creator and former co-editor of the University of California Press book series, Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century.

Steven W. Thrasher is the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting (with an emphasis on issues relevant to the LGBTQ community) and an assistant professor of journalism. Thrasher teaches courses in journalism at the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as elective classes cross-listed with American Studies, African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Thrasher has worked as writer-at-large at The Guardian, staff writer at The Village Voice, and facilitator for the NPR StoryCorps project. His articles are regularly published in the New York Times, BuzzFeed News, Esquire, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and the Daily Beast. He’s also a former researcher for Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update.”

A scholar of the criminalization of HIV/AIDS, Thrasher’s work centers on marginalized populations. As a teacher, he encourages students to draw upon history, theory, culture, and reporting to critically read and create media narratives. Research and reporting areas include U.S. Civil Rights; international histories of LGBTQ and gender identities; social movements; court reporting; media frames; colonialism; critical race theory; queer methods; policing; art criticism; public health reporting; and HIV/AIDS history.

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