Selected Essays & Articles
Selected Peer- Reviewed Essays
History
“Medicalization and the Mainstreaming of Circumcision in mid-20th Century America”
American Jewish History 105; 3 (July 2021), 321-342.
“Did Bioethics Matter? A History of Autonomy, Consent, and Intersex Surgery”
Medical Law Review (April 2019), 658-674.
“Women as Witches; Witches as Women: Witchcraft and Patriarchy in Colonial North America”
(with Matthew Dennis), in Thomas Foster, ed., Women in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
“Transgender Identity at a Crossroads: A Close Reading of a ‘Queer’ Story from 1857”
Early American Studies, Special issue: Beyond the Binaries: Critical Approaches to Sex and Gender in Early America (Fall, 2014), 652-65.
“Hermaphrodites and ‘Same-Sex’ Sex in Early America”
in Thomas Foster, ed., Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexualities in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 144-163.
“Impossible Hermaphrodites: Intersex in America, 1620-1960”
Journal of American History 92 (September 2005), 411-41.
“Immortal Messengers: Angels, Gender, and Power in Early America”
in Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, Mortal Remains: Explaining Death in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 163-75.
"The Devil, the Body, and the Feminine Soul in Puritan New England"
The Journal of American History 82 (June 1995), 15-36
Gender, Sex, and Bioethics
"Prescribing the Binary for Intersex (and Transgender) Children”
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, special issue edited by Debjani Mukherjee on the “Dignity of Risk” 65:2 (Spring 2022), 316-326.
“Midwives and Pregnant Transgender Men: Laboring Toward Ethical Care”
Canadian Medical Association Journal (February 2020). Reprinted in The Nursing Clio Reader, edited by the Nursing Clio Editorial Collective, Rutgers University Press, (forthcoming 2025).
“What Hospitalists Should Know About Intersex Adults”
with Matt McCarthy, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Summer, 2016).
“Transgender Patients, Hospitalists, and Ethical Care”
with Matt McCarthy and Joseph Fins, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Spring, 2016).
"Divergence or Disorder? The Politics of Naming Intersex"
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 50:4 (Autumn 2007), 535-543.
Medical Ethics
“The Need for a Unified Ethical Stance on Child Genital Cutting”
with Brian D. Earp [first author], Arianne Shahvisi, and Samuel Reis-Dennis, Nursing Ethics (March 2021).
“Freezing Eggs and Creating Patients: Moral Risks of Commercialized Fertility”
co-authored with Samuel Reis-Dennis, Just Reproduction: Reimagining Autonomy in Reproductive Medicine, special report, Hastings Center Report 47, no. 6 (2017), 541-545.
“Are Physicians Blameworthy for Iatrogenic Harm Resulting from Unnecessary Genital Surgeries?”
co-authored with Samuel Reis-Dennis, AMA Journal of Ethics 19:9 (August 2017), 825-833.
“Hope Less: How a Healthy Dose of Realism Can Help in the I.C.U.”
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 57:4 (Autumn 2014), 547-554.
Selected Commentaries 2014-2024
“Celebrating Pride Month in the Face of Continuing Threats to LGBTQI Rights”
Columbia School of Professional Studies (June 25, 2024)
“Crying Foul: The Myriad Threats of Anti-Trans Legislation”
Nursing Clio (June 16,2022)
Interview about Bodies in Doubt
NOTCHES (March 3, 2022)
“Bodies in Doubt: A New and Expanded Edition; An Interview with Georgiann Davis”
Nursing Clio (October 26, 2021)
“Intersex People in the Past and Present”
Ms. Magazine (July 15, 2021)
“Teaching Medical Ethics During the Pandemic”
The Hastings Center (May 6, 2020)
“Who Decides? Medical Intervention for Transgender and Intersex Children”
Nursing Clio (March 4, 2020)
“A Historic Intersex Awareness Day”
Nursing Clio (November 3, 2020)
“Defining Sex and Gender: It’s Just Not That Simple”
TIME Magazine (October 23, 2018)
“What’s Truly Outrageous About Intersex?”
Bioethics Forum, Hastings Center (August 14, 2017)
“Pronoun Privilege”
The New York Times (September 25, 2016)
“Hoping for a Good Death”
The New York Times (December 2, 2014)