Drawing on experiences utilizing playwriting to grapple with the historical legacies entangling Blackness and the development of the sciences, medicine, and health that emerged through ethnographic fieldwork, Dr. Edu addresses how anthropology and theater can be put together in the service of predicting what is to come and making space for that exploration and galvanization for change and improved Black lives. Can it help us make futures that invite, nurture, and sustain Blackness, Black reproduction, bodies, technologies, and life, towards the promotion, celebration, and sustenance of Black life? Ugo Edu is a medical anthropologist working at the intersection of medical anthropology, public health, black feminism, and science, technology, and society studies (STS). Using interdisciplinary approaches, her scholarship focuses on reproductive and sexual health, gender, race, aesthetics, body knowledge, and body modifications. Her book project: The “Family Planned”: Racial Aesthetics, Sterilization, and Reproductive Fugitivity in Brazil, traces the influence of an economy of race, aesthetics, and sexuality on reproductive and sterilization practices of women in Brazil. She is working on a play, Securing Ties, which draws heavily on her book project as a means for critical public engagement and an incorporation of the arts in her scholarship. She is an Assistant Professor in the African American Studies Department at UCLA.
