Biography

Dr. Marks is a medical anthropologist specializing in reproductive healthcare and social movements in Latin America. She is interested in care, kinship, pharmaceuticals, activism and the relationship between abortion access, aspiration, and inequality.

Current Research 

Dr. Marks’s current research focuses on the way pill-based abortion is reshaping notions of reproductive care in the Americas. By comparatively examining the experiences of women in Cuba and Brazil as they turn to either clinicians or unlicensed sellers to obtain abortion pills, she seeks to understand how the experience and meaning of abortion -- increasingly carried out in the private sphere -- is shifting. Dr. Marks has extensive fieldwork experience in Havana, Cuba and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. In 2016, she collaborated with a professor at the National School of Public Health in Havana to study the effects of casas maternas (centers for at-risk pregnant women) on women’s health. Dr. Marks recently won three nationally competitive grants for her research on reproductive health: a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, a grant from the National Institutes of Health, and a Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars. 

Recent Publications

Between Care and Crime. Cultural Anthropology, Fieldsights - Hot Spots (2022).

Underground Activists in Brazil Fight for Women's Reproductive Rights. NACLA Report on the Americas (2021).

Gendered Wounds: On Abortion and Partnership in Cuba. Men and Masculinities25(2): 310-327 (2021).

Courses Presently in Rotation

• ANTH 1140G: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology
• ANTH 350: Anthropological Theory
• ANTH 357V: Medical Anthropology
• ANTH 458: Fertility Reproduction and Birth