Claire McKinney

Research

Professor McKinney’s research focuses on the intersections of gender, politics, and reproduction in the American context. She is working on a book manuscript that argues that the mainstream abortion politics in the United States limits the ways abortion is understood, to the detriment of thinking more critically about gender and citizenship. Her work involves a rereading of the long history of abortion politics (1850-2018) to argue that the role of medicine and medical expertise has been undervalued in how we come to understand the politics and morality of abortion. Through a reading of medical texts, Supreme Court cases, social movement archives, and contemporary law and politics, she demonstrates how race, gender, and disability are produced through both anti-abortion and abortion access reform politics. More broadly, Professor McKinney is interested in how the meaning of health has come to reorient political identity and citizenship. Her work has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly and Politics, Groups, and Identities.