About the Curator

 

Elena R. Gutiérrez

Elena R. Gutiérrez is an Associate Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago.  Dr. Gutiérrez earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Michigan and is a scholar of Latina/o reproductive and sexual health politics, feminism and social activism and Chicana/o Studies. She most recently received funding from the Migration and Health Research Program (PIMSA) for a bi-national project to research the role of social networks in the reproductive health care that Mexican immigrant women in Chicago. Her book publications include Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice with Jael Silliman, Marlene Gerber Fried, and Loretta Ross (Boston: South End Press, October 2004) which received the 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award in the area of bigotry and human rights, and Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican origin Women’s Reproduction (University of Texas Press, 2008).  Fertile Matters documents the involuntary sterilization of Mexican-origin women in Los Angeles in the 1970s and illuminates the ways in which political, social and racial anxieties shaped the construction of the “problem” of Mexican origin women’s fertility and reproduction, and Dr. Gutiérrez continues to research and write about contemporary struggles for reproductive justice. In addition to her academic appointments Dr. Gutiérrez has served on the boards of and worked as a consultant with ACCESS Women’s Health Justice, the National Latina Health Organization, SisterSong, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Mujeres Latinas en Acción, and the Chicago Abortion Fund.