Eric Plemons

Medical Anthropologist

Eric Plemons graduated from DePauw in 1999, with a degree in History and went on to study at The University of Chicago, and then earn his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He currently works at the University of Arizona in the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology. He specializes in medical anthropology on surgical practices and the creation and use of knowledge about gendered bodies. Eric is an important part of the Transgender Studies Initiative in Arizona, and his research encompasses theories of sex and gender, the study of technology and medical innovation, as well as science and the political economies of medicine.

Eric has been published in Medical Anthropology, Social Studies of Science, the Journal of Medical Humanities, and The Body Reader, with titles such as “Anatomical Authorities: On the epistemological exclusion of trans- surgical patients,” and “It Is As It Does: Genital Form and Function in Sex Reassignment Surgery.” Right now he is working on a book project entitled The Look of a Woman, which is forthcoming from Duke University Press. The book examines Facial Feminization Surgery and the changing therapeutic logics of trans-medicine. He is also working to assemble a history of genital sex reassignment surgery. At the University of Arizona he teaches classes such as ‘Many Ways of Being Human’ and ‘Sex, Gender, Science, Medicine.'