Visionary Faculty: Eric Plemons

Eric Plemons is a medical anthropologist focused on surgical practice and the production, circulation and application of expert knowledge on gendered bodies. His first book, The Look of a Woman (2017, Duke University Press), examines facial feminization surgery, a series of bone and soft tissue reconstructive surgeries intended to feminize the faces of trans- women. His current projects include multi-sited ethnographic research investigating how US institutions are responding to a growing demand for trans- healthcare, and a literature-based analysis of how trans- surgical outcomes are studied and clinically assessed. He is also developing a book project "Architectures of Manhood" on genital injury and rehabilitation. Focused on knowledge and how it moves in the form of embodied and institutional practices, his research has been problem- rather than place-based. Working on expertise as it shapes practices of gender-making medicine, he has conducted ethnographic work in surgical clinics in the US, Northern Europe, and South America.
His research engages theories of sex and gender, the critical study of science and medicine, political economies of medicine and medical innovation, trans- studies, anthropological theories of practice, and the studies of technology and technique.
He is the Director of the Medical Anthropology Concentration and Certificate Programs, and Co-chair of the UA Transgender Studies Research Cluster. He is a faculty affiliate of the Institute for LGBT Studies, the Department of Gender & Women's Studies, and the Graduate Interdisciplinary Degree Program in Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory.