Sarah Hodges, PhD
Department of History
University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
Tel: 02476 523451
Fax: 02476 523437
Education
University of Chicago. Ph.D. in History, December 1999
University of Chicago. M.A. in History, December 1994
Madurai Kamaraj University, India. Diploma in Tamil, June 1993
Brown University. B.A. in History, May 1990
Madurai Kamaraj University, India. Certificate in Tamil, June 1989
Employment
University of Warwick
Associate Professor of History, 2008-present
Assistant Professor of History, 2003-2007
University of Cambridge
Temporary University Lecturer in the History of Modern Medicine, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 2001-2003.
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Medicine, Department of History,
2000-2001.
Visiting Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, 1999-2001.
University of Chicago
Tamil Language Teaching Assistant, Department of Southern Asian Languages and Literatures, 1994-1995.
Courses taught: Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Tamil Conversation.
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madurai Campus. Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Director, University of Wisconsin College Year in India Program-Madurai, 1992-93.
South India Term Abroad Program, Madurai, India. Program Assistant, 1990-91.
Publications
Books
Biotrash (Delhi: Navayana Publishing, forthcoming 2016).
Contraception, Colonialism and Commerce: Birth Control in South India, 1920-1940. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
Edited volumes
Public Health and Private Wealth: Stem Cells, Surrogates and Other Strategic Bodies.Public health and private wealth in modern India Delhi: Oxford University Press (in press). Edited with Mohan Rao.
Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies. Editor (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006).
Guest Edited Special Issues
Women's Studies Quarterly: Technologies 37, 1 & 2 (Spring/Summer 2009). With Karen Throsby.
Journal articles
“Umbilical Cord Blood Banking and its Interruptions: Notes from Chennai, India.” Economy and Society 42, 4 (2013), pp. 651-670.
“Medical Garbage and the Making of Neoliberalism in India.” Economic and Political Weekly 48, 48 (November 30, 2013).
“‘It all changed after Apollo’: Medical Myth and Myth-Making in Post-Liberalisation India.” Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 10, 4 (2013).
“The Global Menace.” Social History of Medicine 25, 3, (2012) pp. 719-728.
“Revolutionary Family Life and the Self Respect Movement in Tamil South India, 1926-49.” Contributions to Indian Sociology (2005) 39, 2: 251-277.
“Looting the Lock Hospital in Colonial Madras during the Famine Years of the 1870s.” Social History of Medicine 18, 3 (2005): 379-398.
“Governmentality, Population and the Reproductive Family in Modern India.” Economic and Political Weekly 39, 11 (2004): 1157-1163.
Articles in edited volumes
“South Asia’s Eugenic Past.” In Alison Bashford and Philippa Levine (eds), Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 228-242.
“Towards a History of Reproduction in Modern India.” In Hodges (ed.), Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006), pp. 1-21.
“Indian Eugenics in an Age of Reform” in Hodges (ed.), Reproductive Health in India: History, Politics, Controversies (Delhi: Orient Longman, 2006), pp. 115-138.
Review essays
“Malthus is Forever: The Global Market for Population Control.” Global Social Policy, 10, 1 (2010): 120-26.
Working Papers
“Chennai’s Biotrash Chronicles: Chasing the Neo-Liberal Syringe.” May 2008. GARNET Working Paper No. 4408.
Administrative Positions
MA Director, History Department, University of Warwick. 2014-present
MA History of Medicine Convener, University of Warwick 2008-09; 2010-2011
Undergraduate Admissions Tutor, History Department, University of Warwick. -2007-09; 2010-2013
Visiting Positions
Visiting Academic, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Jointly Sponsored by the Centre for Historical Studies and the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health. January 2010.
Editorial Boards
Social History of Medicine, 2012-present.
Funding and Advisory Panels
Medical History and Humanities Interview Panel, Wellcome Trust, 2011-present.
India Programme Awards, Wellcome Trust, 2011-present.
Plenary and Keynote Lectures
‘The Global Menace and its Interruptions.’ Keynote lecture at the Globhealth Inaugural Conference, ‘From International to Global: Knowledge, Diseases and the Postwar Government of Health’. Domaine de Bierville, February 2015.
‘Throwaway Medicine: Medical Garbage and the Problem of Stigma.’ Plenary lecture. State, Society, Stigma: Rethinking Disease in a Global Age. La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, 26–27 June 2014.
Invited Lectures
‘Biotrash: The Afterlives of Medical Garbage in Chennai’. South Asia Institute, University of Texas-Austin. April 2015.
‘Hospitals as Factories of Medical Garbage.’ Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai. January, 2015
Member, Presidential Roundtable on ‘Bodily Disciplines: Writing at the Interface of History and Public Health’. American Historical Association Annual Meeting, New York City, January 2015.
“The Skin of the City: Moral and Material Histories of Plastic in India”. Asia Research Institute Cluster Seminar, National University of Singapore. 30 June 2014.
“Global Histories of Science and the Case for Interruptions.” Exploring Traditions: Sources for a Global History of Science. University of Cambridge, 30 May 2014.
“The Progress of Plastic: Medical garbage and its afterlives in contemporary India.” Research Seminar in the History of Medicine, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford. 3 March 2014.
“The Skin of Neoliberalism: Moral and material histories of plastic in India.” South Asia History Seminar, St Antony’s College, Oxford. 4 February 2014.
“Medical garbage and the making of the neoliberal in India.” Inequality, Mobility and Sociality in Contemporary India. Yale University, 27 April 2013.
“Biotrash: The urban metabolism of medical garbage in India.” Center for Historical Research. Ohio State University, 5 April 2013.
“Medical garbage and the making of the neoliberal in India,” Science, technology and medicine in India: The problem of poverty. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, 28-29 March, 2013.
“Reproductive Health in India: On Writing Critical Histories.” Community Health Cell, Society for Community Health Awareness, Research and Action (SOCHARA), Chennai, India, 15 February 2013.
“Genealogies of garbage in modern India.” South Asia History Seminar. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 9 October 2012.
“’Let not litter spoil the glitter’: On the Governmenality of Garbage in Modern India.” Modern Indian History and Society Seminar. Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Georg-August-Universitat, Gottingen. 28 June 2012.
“Garbage as a Marker of What? Genealogies of Garbage in Modern India.” Workshop on South Asian Governmentalities. British Academy, 31 March 2012.
“On the Limits to Speculative Surplus Value: Cord Blood Banking in Chennai.” Workshop on Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern India. Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, 23 March, 2012.
“The Afterlives of Afterbirth: Placental waste and Chennai’s Urban Metabolism.”
Medical anthropology seminar, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 14 June 2011.
“The Afterlives of Afterbirth: Stem Cells and the Devil in “New” Chennai, India.” Presented at the workshop “Subaltern Histories,” Institute for Advanced Study, University of Warwick, 8 June 2011.
“Biotrash: Medical Garbage in India.” Presented at the workshop “The local and the global in India.” Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick, 2 June 2011.
“The Afterlives of Afterbirth, or, Stem Cells and the Devil in ‘New Chennai’.” Presented at the South Asia Seminar, University of Chicago, April 27, 2011.
“The Global Menace.” Seminar for the History of Health and Health Care. Glasgow Caledonian University, November 2010.
“Health is Wealth.” Presented at the workshop, Science, technology and medicine in India, 1930-2000: The problem of poverty. Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, November 11, 2010.
“Global Histories of Medicine.” History of Science and Medicine Brown Bag Series, University of Madison-Wisconsin. September 2010.
“Biotrash in Chennai: On the Neoliberal Govermentality of Risk and Value.” Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison. September 2010.
“Sex and the City: Contraception in Colonial Chennai.” Delivered at the ICICI Centre for Child Health and Nutrition, Pune, April 2010.
“Biotrash: Medical Garbage in Chennai.” Delivered at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University, January 2010.
Contraception and the Self Respect Movement in Late Colonial Tamil Nadu. Delivered at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, January 2010.
“Of Biotrash and Techno-Bling in New Chennai.” Delivered at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development (NISTADS), January 2010.
“When is Waste? Excess, theory and materiality.” Delivered at the workshop “waste/EXCESS.” Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick, May 2009.
“Of Biotrash and Techno-Bling: Umbilical Cord Blood Banking in Chennai.” Delivered at the workshop “The Commercialization of Local Knowledge.” French Institute of Pondicherry, India, November 2008.
“Of Biotrash and Techno-Bling: Umbilical Cord Blood Banking in Chennai.” Delivered at the workshop “Bodily States in South Asia: Contemporary Histories.” University of Warwick, September 2008.
“Eugenics in India.” Delivered at the workshop “Gender in South Asia: New Approaches”, University of Nottingham, June 2008.
“Biotrash: Medical Garbage in India.” Delivered at the workshop “The Question of ‘Waste’ in the History of Medicine,” May 16-17, 2008, Warwick in Venice.
“Biotrash: Medical Garbage in India.” Departmental Seminar, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, February 2008.
“Biotrash: Medical Garbage in India.” Departmental Seminar, Department of History, University of Sussex, February 2008.
“An Apocalyptic Body Politics of Modernity: Birth Control and the Self Respect Movement, 1926-1944.” South Asia History Seminar, St Antony’s College, Oxford, November 2007.
“Biotrash: The Global Traffic in Medical Garbage in a Post-Genomic Age.” History in Public Health Seminar, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, April 2007.
“Sex and the City: Contraceptive Commerce in Madras.” Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Seminar, University of Manchester, April 2007.
“Biotrash: The Global Traffic in Medical Garbage in a Post-Genomic Age.” Presented at the workshop, “Health, Governance and the Global: Cultural Histories and Contemporary Practices”, Centre for the Social History of Medicine and Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization, University of Warwick, March 2007.
“Contraception’s Voluntary Empire: Health and Society in South India before the Development State.” Contemporary South Asia Seminar, Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. March 2006.
“Contraception’s Voluntary Empire: Health and Society in South India before the Development State.” South Asia Seminar, University of Edinburgh, March 2005.
“Contraception’s Voluntary Empire: Health and Society in South India Before the
Development State.” Social History of Medicine Research Seminar, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, April 2005.
“Looting the Lock Hospital in Colonial Madras.” Historical and Cultural Geography Seminar, University of Cambridge, January 2005.
“What’s Colonial about Colonial Medicine? Notes on Governmentality and Madras Presidency Lock Hospitals in the Hungry 1870s.” Science and Technology Studies Colloquium, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 2004,
“What’s Colonial about Colonial Medicine? Notes on Governmentality and Madras Presidency Lock Hospitals in the Hungry 1870s.” Centre for the History of Medicine Research Seminar, University of Warwick, November 2004.
“Revolutionary Family Life and the Self-Respect Movement in Tamil South India, 1926-44.” “Alternate Histories of the Family,” workshop held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, September 2003.
“A Hygiene of Marriage for the Tamil Country.” University of Cambridge Commonwealth and Overseas Seminar Lent Term Symposium on Gender and Empire, March 2002.
“Indian Eugenics and Public Service Maternity.” Workshop on Population, Birth Control and Reproductive Health in Late Colonial India, Centre for the Culture and History of Medicine, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, November 1999.
“Love and the Lock Hospital in Colonial Madras.” Seminar on the History of Science and Medicine, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London, February 1999.
“Revolutionary Family Life, Birth Control and the Self Respect Movement.” South Asia History Workshop, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, November 1998.
“From Sciences of the Self to Regulating the Social: Family Planning and the
Early 20th-Century Careers of Eugenics, Domestic Science and Sexology in
India.” Institute for Development Alternatives Research Workshop, Madras, India, March 1998.
Conference presentations
“The Afterlives of Afterbirth: Placental Waste Economies in “New” Chennai, India.”Presented at the 84th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Philadelphia. 29 April 2011.
“The Afterlives of Afterbirth: Placental Waste Economies in Chennai, India.” National Bioethics Conference, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi. 19 November 2011.
“Of Biotrash and Techno-Bling: Umbilical Cord Blood Banking in Chennai.” Delivered at the international conference on the History of Medicine and its Global Connections. Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, June, 2009.
“Health Citizenship among Colonial Subjects.” Delivered at the conference “Imaging and Practicing Imperial and Colonial Medicine,” Oxford, January 10-12, 2008.
“Quality and Quantity: Eugenics in India.” Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Association of Asian Studies, San Diego, March 2005.
“Contraception’s Voluntary Empire: Health and Society in India before the Development State.” Presented at the 33rd Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, October, 2004.
“The Cold War Science of Population: Kingsley Davis, Demography, and the Always-Already of Overpopulation in India.” Presented at the Annual Meetings of the Association of Asian Studies, Washington, DC, April 2002
“Sexology, Patent Medicine and the Construction of the Modern Indian Family, 1920-1940.”
Presented at the Sixteenth European Conference on Modern South Asia, Edinburgh, September 2000.
“Birth Control in India, 1921-51.” University of Chicago History Seminar Paper Symposium, April 1995.
“Marking the Colonial in Medicine: Race in the Indian and English Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864-1888.” 23rd Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, November 1994.
PhDs Supervised
Bhangya Bhukya, “Change, Identity and the Lambada Community.” Department of History, University of Warwick. June 2006. Co-supervised with David Hardiman.
Shailaja Paik, “Daughters of the Lesser God: Narratives of Dalit Women from Pune.” Department of History, University of Warwick. September 2007. Co-supervised with David Hardiman.
Katherine Foxhall, “Discourses of Disease at Sea: Bodies, Ships and the Ocean in the Voyage to Australia, c. 1830-1880.” Department of History, University of Warwick. October 2008. Co-supervised with Margot Finn.
Darshi Thoradeniya, “Beyond Reproduction? A New Template for Modernity in Sri Lanka.” Current student, Department of History, University of Warwick. January 2014.
Rebecca Williams, “Revisiting the Khanna Study: Population and Development in India, 1953-1960.” Department of History, University of Warwick. January 2014.