Wesleyan portrait of Victoria  Pitts-Taylor

Victoria Pitts-Taylor

Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Allbritton Center Room 220, 222 Church Street
860-685-2264

Professor, Sociology

Allbritton Center Room 220, 222 Church Street
860-685-2264

Professor, Science in Society

Allbritton Center Room 220, 222 Church Street
860-685-2264

vpitts@wesleyan.edu

BA Ohio University
PHD Brandeis University

Victoria Pitts-Taylor

Victoria Pitts-Taylor studies how the body is understood and modified by medicine, science and culture. Professor Pitts-Taylor is author of The Brain’s Body: Neuroscience and Corporeal Politics (Duke University Press, 2016), which won the Philosophy of Science Association's Women's Caucus Prize in Feminist Phiolosophy of Science and the Robert K. Merton Book Prize from the Science, Knowledge and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association. She is also the Editor of the anthology Mattering: Feminism, Science, and Materialism (NYU Press, 2016).  She also authored two books on the medical, legal and social ramifications of normative and counter-cultural body practices, In the Flesh: the Cultural Politics of Body Modification (2003, Palgrave Macmillan) and Surgery Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic Culture (2007, Rutgers University Press). She is also the Editor of the two-volume Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body (2008, Greenwood Press), which catalogues body practices across various epochs and cultural traditions. She is a past recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Advancement of the Discipline Award and a former co-General Editor of the journal WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly), and served as the first elected chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on the Body and Embodiment. Her most recent articles are published in the journals Science, Technology & Human Values, Sexualities, and Health. Her current project examines the legal, medical, and scientific framings of trans and gender nonconforming children and youth within a biopolitical frame. 

Academic Affiliations

Office Hours

I am away on sabbatical until the start of Fall semester 2025.