University of Vermont

Marsh Professor-at-Large Nancy Scheper-Hughes will deliver a public lecture titled "A World Cut in Two: The Global Traffic in Organs" on Tuesday, March 25 at 4 p.m. in the Livak Grand Ballroom, Davis Center. A reception will immediately follow the talk.

Scheper-Hughes is professor of medical anthropology and director of the doctoral program, Critical Studies in Medicine, Science, and the Body, at the University of California, Berkeley. As a medical anthropologist, she explores humans as biological, social and cultural beings, with a particular focus on structural and political violence exacted on bodies in a variety of countries and cultures. Her work has examined mental illness in rural Ireland, AIDS in Cuba, and motherhood and infant death in Brazil, among other topics.

From 1997 to the present, she has studied the global trafficking of organs as part of a multi-sited research project in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Israel, Moldova-Romania, Philippines, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. She is the director of Organs Watch, a human rights initiative she co-founded in 1999 with the goal of documenting and researching organ trafficking, a growing black market operation that preys on impoverished populations for the benefit of the affluent.

On Thursday, March 27 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Scheper-Hughes will also participate in a town meeting-style conference, "'Weak' States, Lawlessness, and the Era of Globalization" in John Dewey Lounge, Old Mill. Among talks led by several other prominent academics from Yale, McGill University, University of Vermont, and other institutions, Scheper-Hughes will speak at 1 p.m. on "Death Squads and Democracy."

The town meeting, honoring late UVM professor and anthropology chair James Petersen, is presented by the Marsh Visiting Professorship, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Humanities, the Area and International Studies Program, and the generosity of the Kleinknecht Family.