Professor, Women and Gender Studies, School of Social Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Bio

Ann Hibner Koblitz, Professor of Women and Gender Studies, has taught at ASU since 1998. Her first book was the biography of a Russian woman mathematician, feminist and writer. Her second book examined the lives of the first group of Russian women to receive their doctorates in the sciences and medicine. Her most recent book, Sex and Herbs and Birth Control: Women and Fertility Regulation through the Ages (Kovalevskaia Fund, 2014) received the 2015 Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award from the Institute for Humanties Research at ASU. She also directs a small non-profit foundation for women in science in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and her blog, "Sex, Abortion, and Contraception," can be found at http://ahkoblitz.wordpress.com

Research Interests and Selected Publications

Although Hibner Koblitz's research interests have changed considerably since she received her PhD in Russian Intellectual History from Boston University in 1983, they still generally revolve around the relationships of gender with science, technology (broadly defined) and medicine. Her first two books, A Convergence of Lives. Sofia Kovalevskaia: Scientist, Writer, Revolutionary and Science, Women and Revolution in Russia examined the lives of 19th-century Russian women scientists and mathematicians and explored the significance of their stories for feminist gender and science theory. Koblitz has also written several dozen research articles on Russian women in science, gender and science theory, gender and archaeology, and comparative aspects of women/gender in science, technology and medicine (with special emphasis on the situations of women in Asia, Africa and Latin America). Her most recent book, Sex and Herbs and Birth Control, is a cross-cultural examination of fertility control methods, meanings of pregnancy/abortion, demographers' narratives about reproduction, and degradation of contraceptive knowledge.

Teaching Interests and Courses

Hibner Koblitz's teaching interests include feminist theory, gender and science/technology/medicine, gender and development, and women's medicine. Her global feminist theory course explores the interactions/tensions of transnational feminist theory with postcolonial theory, critical race theory, etc. Her graduate courses examine feminist epistemologies, ecofeminism, technologies of gender, and postcolonial critiques in the context of science and technology studies; and case studies in biopolitics and its relationships to market and state actors. She is also graduate faculty in History, and she is on the executive committee of the doctoral program in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology.

Professional Service Activities

Hibner Koblitz is co-founder and director of the Kovalevskaia Fund for the encouragement of women in science, technology and medicine in Asia, Africa and Latin America. She has consulted for UNIFEM, the Vietnam Women's Museum, and the Gender Research Institute of Essen University. She has been an Arizona Humanities Council speaker, and has served on national committees of the History of Science Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Women in Slavic Studies, the American Mathematical Society, and other professional organizations.