Shelley Z. Reuter

Shelley Z. Reuter was hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in 2003, and received tenure and promotion to Associate in 2007. Prior to joining Concordia University, she was a faculty member at Memorial University of Newfoundland and at Queen’s University, where she also earned her PhD (2001). Reuter's interests fall into three main areas: 1) the historical sociology of medicine and particularly the ways in which ideas about disease intersect with culture; 2) biocitizenship and responsibilization; and 3) motherhood and childlessness. She recently finished a project on the racialised history of Tay-Sachs disease and is presently completing a study of reproductive decision-making among childless Canadian academic women. She is in the early stages of new research on biocitizenship and responsibilization vis-à-vis wellness promotion by Employee Assistance Programs and student health clinics on Canadian university campuses. She is also beginning a new project on mothers who decide to leave their children. Reuter is the author of Testing Fate: Tay-Sachs Disease and the Right to be Responsible (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Narrating Social Order: Agoraphobia and the Politics of Classification (University of Toronto Press, 2007) and a joint editor, with Katja Neves-Graça, of a special issue on Genes and Society of the Canadian Review of Sociology (2007). She has also published articles in Economy & Society, the Canadian Journal of Sociology, Women’s Health & Urban Life, and Sociology of Health & Illness.