Ph.D., U Mass Amherst, 2004
Ob/Gyn, University of New Mexico, 1994
M.D., Michigan State University, 1990
Associate Professor of Anthropology
At UW-Madison since 2005
Also Appointed in: Obstetrics & Gynecology; Medical History and Bioethics
Affiliations: African Studies Program; Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies; Center for Global Health; Global Studies
As a medical anthropologist, I focus on the globalization of biomedicine, particularly in Africa. Related work includes the anthropology of reproduction, sexuality and the body. My first book, A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2010. That book explores the experiences of medical students learning to be doctors in Malawi, and argues that their responses challenge several longstanding assumptions about biomedicine and about African healing. My new research project looks at changing concepts and loci of risk in childbirth in southeast Africa, in a setting in which very high maternal mortality rates force professionals and lay people alike to develop explanations for the link between birth and death. I seek to understand how the narratives of maternal death they produce reflect experiences of a rapidly changing social, economic, and biomedical context.
2008 Wendland, Claire. Research, Therapy, and Bioethical Hegemony: The Controversy over Prenatal HIV Research in Africa. African Studies Review 51(3):1-23
2008 Wendland, Claire. Baby Blues: Considering Contemporary Maternity [review essay]. Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources 29(3)
2007 Wendland, Claire. The Vanishing Mother: Cesarean Section and "Evidence-Based Obstetrics." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 21(2):218-233.
2007 Wendland, Claire and Chiwoza Bandawe. A Qualitative Study of Medical Student Socialization in Malawi's College of Medicine: Preclinical Training and Identity. Malawi Medical Journal 19(2):68-71, and (same authors) Clinical Crisis and Beyond. Malawi Medical Journal 19(2):71-74. See also the related editorial in the same issue.
2006 Wendland, Claire. Lost and Damaged: The Perilous American Pregnancy [review essay]. Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources 27(2-3):1-5.
2006 Wendland, Claire. The Cult of Domesticity and the Brotherhood of Science: Gendering American Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. The Pharos 69(3):30-37 [winner of The Pharos 2006 Editor's Prize].
I teach an introductory course in medical anthropology, a graduate seminar in anthropology and international health, and various courses in the anthropology of Africa and in general cultural anthropology. I also have an interest in ethics and have taught both anthropological ethics and bioethics courses.
Office: 4231 Sewell Social Science Bldg.
Office phone: (608) 262-3874 (no voicemail)
Email address: cwendland@wisc.edu