Upcoming Events


KU Sociology Department Presents the Clark Lecture Series featuring Dr. Sharmila Rudrappa discussing Landscapes of Infertility and the Afterlives of Colonialism in India on October 26 at 2 p.m. in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union

Thursday, Oct. 26, 2:00 p.m. in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union

Forming the warp and weft of everyday life, making life possible, are mundane decisions made on the distributions of hope and life on one hand, and death on the other. Yet, most sociologies of reproduction resolutely attend to the possibilities for life, while evading the question of death and disintegration altogether.

This talk keeps at the forefront that concomitant with possibilities for life, constituent to contemporary social arrangements, are hidden transcripts of destruction. Focusing on the human and non-human aspects of coffee plantation cultures in the hills of Malnad, southern India and traveling to the US, to Austin, Texas, this talk describes the parallel worlds of plants, animals, insects, and diseases that weave in and out of the narratives of human reproduction that are deeply imbued with ideas of family, belonging, inheritance, and private property.

In studying reproduction, the question needs to be asked: What must be vigilantly nurtured and what must be quietly annihilated in order to render life as we know it, possible?

Sharmila Rudrappa is Professor of Sociology and Director of the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Rudrappa’s current research looks at how markets develop in human materials, specifically from women's bodies, and she has written extensively on the politics of assisted reproductive technologies in India. Her publications include Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India (2015) and Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship (2004).