
Contact Information
1207 W. Oregon Street
M/C 136
Research Interests
Latina/o and Ethnic Studies
The politics of reproduction
Disability Studies
Chicana feminism
Histories of racial and reproductive justice
Histories of medicine and public health
Research Description
Natalie Lira's research uncovers the largely neglected racial aspects of California’s eugenic sterilization program by providing evidence of the disproportionate institutionalization and sterilization of Mexican-origin women and men in state hospitals for the disabled during the first half of the twentieth century. Mobilizing an interdisciplinary mix of feminist, critical racial, and historical lenses, Dr. Lira's research illustrates how stereotypes of Mexican-origin women and men as mentally inferior, hypersexual, criminal and unfit for citizenship came together with emerging medical and scientific concepts of deviance, delinquency, and disability to justify institutionalization and reproductive constraint. Through statistical and discursive analyses of thousands of sterilization requests, consent forms, institutional publications, and social science theses her work shows how eugenic ideas about national and racial health, disability, and immigration determined the reproductive future of institutionalized populations. In addition to documenting Mexican-origin women and men's experiences of institutionalization and sterilization, Dr. Lira's research unearths the various ways Mexican-origin patients and their families challenged institutional authorities and sought to prevent sterilization. In doing so, her work figures Mexican-origin women and men's experiences of reproductive constraint, institutionalization, and their anti- sterilization efforts as central to twentieth century histories of racial and reproductive struggles.
Education
American Culture, Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
American Culture, MA, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Latin American and Caribbean Studies, BA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Latina/Latino Studies
Assistant Professor, Gender and Women's Studies
External Links
Recent Publications
Lira, N. (2021). Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in Ca lifornia, 1900-1950s. In The Muslim Merchants of Premodern China: The History of a Maritime Asian Trade Diaspora, 750-1400 (pp. 1-285). Taylor and Francis.
Lira, N. (2021). “Low mentality” and “criminal tendencies”: Race, crime and disability in the politics of Latino men’s reproduction: “Baja mentalidad” y “tendencias criminales”: La raza, el crimen y la discapacidad en la política reproductiva hacia el hombre latino. Latino Studies, 19(3), 310-333. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-021-00332-5
Lira, N. (2020). Contraception. In The Routledge History of American Sexuality (pp. 145-153). Taylor and Francis Inc..
Novak, N. L., Lira, N., O’Connor, K. E., Harlow, S. D., Kardia, S. L. R., & Minna Stern, A. (2018). Disproportionate sterilization of Latinos under California’s eugenic sterilization program, 1920-1945. American journal of public health, 108(5), 611-613. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304369
Stern, A. M., Novak, N. L., Lira, N., O'Connor, K., Harlow, S., & Kardia, S. (2017). California's sterilization survivors: An estimate and call for redress. American journal of public health, 107(1), 50-54. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303489