Research Interests

My research focuses on the intersection of local transformations; global processes; and structures of inequalities surrounding issues of sexuality, particularly gender, sexual and reproductive health, regulation, courtship and romance, and marriage. Using ethnographic and historical methods and critical theory, my research in eastern Uganda focuses on how regimes of regulation and discourses of sexuality have shifted since independence and, more recently, during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Theoretical questions revolve around how differentiated actors appropriate increasingly accessible, yet often contradictory, images and discourses of sexuality into their everyday debates, conversations, and ideas of sexual relationships. I highlight the ways in which various state, family, health, and local agents attempt to regulate meanings of sexuality and how such struggles are connected to increased anxiety stimulated by sexual health concerns, commercialization of the local economy, and Uganda's connection to global cultural flows. My current work examines youth romance as written in their love letters, and attempts to regulate sexuality through the age of consent law. I pay particular attention to the articulations of historic inequalities such as sex, age, and class in sexual relationships.

In my fieldwork I integrate ethnographic research methods with active research techniques. By doing so, I enter into dialogue with debates about the role of anthropology in public health and anthropological critiques of development. I have begun further research on infidelity and HIV transmission and the social history of sexuality in rural post-colonial Uganda. Broadly speaking, I am interested in sexual and reproductive health issues, and regimes of sexuality.

My courses cross into African and Afro-American Studies, Women's Studies, International and Area Studies, Social Thought and Analysis, and the History and Philosophy of Science

Selected Publications

2008. Beyond the Structure vs. Agency Debate in Sexual Decision-Making: Love Letters, Youth Romance and Condoms in Uganda. In Dorothy Roberts and Rhoda Reddick (eds.) Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: The Caribbean and Beyond. Ian Randle Publishers: Kingston, Jamaica (forthcoming).

2007. The Political Economy of Marital HIV Risk in Uganda: The ABC Approach, Unintended Risk, and 'Safe' Infidelity. American Journal of Public Health 97( 7): 1198-1208.

2007. Age of Consent Law and Moral Order: The Criminalization of Youth Sexual Relationships in Uganda. In Carolyn M. Elliott (ed.) Global Empowerment of Women: Responses to Globalization and Politicized Religions. New York: Routledge. Pages 303-326.

2005 From Auntie to Disco: The Bifurcation of Risk and Pleasure in Sex Education in Uganda. In Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality, and Morality in Global Perspective, V. Adams and S. L. Pigg (eds). Durham: Duke University Press, p 125-158. 

2004 Sex, Lies and Love Letters: Condoms, Female Agency, and Paradoxes of Romance in Uganda. In Agenda: African Feminisms, Special Issue "Sexualities/Sexuality in Africa," 62, Vol 2/1:2-20. 

2004 Sugar Daddies and Sexual Citizenship in Uganda: Rethinking 3rd Wave Feminism. In Black Renaissance / Renaissance Noir, 6, 1:82-107. 

2003 'Don't tell your sister or anyone that you love me': Considering the Effects of Adult Regulation on Adolescent Sexual Subjectivities in Uganda's Time of AIDS. In Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS: Research and Intervention in Africa, B. Pinkowsky Tersbøl (ed). Institute of Public Health , University of Copenhagen.

Courses

Local Genders/Global Transformations (L48 4362)
Sexuality, Power, and Culture (L48 4363)
Anthropological Approaches to Social Change