Elise Andaya

Personal webpage

Elise Andaya is a feminist cultural medical anthropologist whose prize-winning research examines experiences of reproduction and reproductive health care, particularly prenatal and abortion care, and their intersection with health disparities and forms of state governance. Her first book, Conceiving Cuba: Women, Reproduction, and the State in the Contemporary Era (Rutgers University Press, 2014) won ReproNetwork’s Adele E. Clarke Award for the Best Book in Reproduction and was recognized with an Honorable Mention for the Michelle Z. Rosaldo Prize for Best First Book in Feminist Anthropology. 

Her second book, Pregnant at Work: Low-Wage Workers, Power, and Temporal Injustice (New York University Press, March 2024) examines the experiences of pregnant service sector workers in New York City as they try to navigate the time conflicts between precarious low-wage service labor and safety net prenatal care, showing how inequalities of race, class, gender, and immigration status are reproduced through institutions and individual bodies.

Andaya’s current research project builds on her interest in health disparities in the context of COVID-19 to consider how individuals, communities, and scientists imagine the relationship between smell/olfaction and health.
 

Research and Teaching Interests

Reproduction and reproductive health care, gender, health disparities, state governance, science and technology studies
 

Areas

U.S., Cuba, Latin America and the Caribbean