Elspeth Gow

University of Pennsylvania

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Research Fellow

Industrializing Kinship: Livestock Breeding and Making of Reproduction after the Cold War

Industrializing Kinship investigates the industrialization of reproduction in North America between the 1940s and 2000s. Rather than viewing livestock breeding as a prologue to human fertility medicine, I position animal agriculture as the analytic center of modern reproductive infrastructure. Drawing on queer and feminist STS and infrastructure studies, I trace how logistical systems—supply chains, regulations, and breeding metrics—transformed reproduction into a privatized domain I term “industrial kinship.” Through sustained attention to understudied archives in reproductive science and industry, including rich collections of administrative documentation and internal records, my project seeks to demonstrate how animal agricultural knowledge systems served as continuing epistemic and administrative resources for broader scientific, political, and cultural reconfigurations of reproduction.

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Babak Ashrafi, Jan Golinski, Keith Wailoo, and Tom Misa at the Presidents of AAHM, HSS, and SHOT event. Held online on September 14, 2020

Babak Ashrafi, Jan Golinski, Keith Wailoo, and Tom Misa at the Presidents of AAHM, HSS, and SHOT event. Held online on September 14, 2020.