Monica J. Casper

Co-founder
Monica Casper

Monica J. Casper majored in sociology at the University of Chicago and was hooked for life. She went on to complete a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, where she studied medical sociology, qualitative methods, health professions, and women’s health. Her dissertation examined the social history of fetal surgery and emergence of the “unborn patient,” analyzing the fetus as a work object (Casper 1998) and situating fetal surgery within contested reproductive politics. That project took her to Auckland, New Zealand and Puerto Rico for ethnographic fieldwork. Based on her dissertation, Professor Casper’s first book, The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery, won the C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. She has since published six additional books, including most recently Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life, co-edited with Eric Wertheimer. Her manuscript on infant mortality and race in the U.S. is under contract with Rutgers University Press. Professor Casper is deeply invested in the promise of sociology as a means to understand and change the world, while also working in and across other fields, including feminist studies, environmental studies, critical animal studies, trauma studies, and disability studies. She is currently involved in two research projects: (1) traumatic brain injury in athletes, veterans, and domestic violence survivors, and (2) biopolitics of elephant trauma and sanctuary. For more information, visit monicajcasper.com.