Steven Epstein
Professor of Sociology; John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities
- s-epstein@northwestern.edu
- (847) 491-5536
- 1808 Chicago Avenue, Room 206
- Office Hours: by appointment only
- Make an appointment by email
Area(s) of Interest
Science, Knowledge, and Technology; Health and Biomedicine; Sexualities; Social Movements; Theory; Culture; Inequalities
Relevant Links
Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities
Science in Human Culture Program
Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN)
Gender & Sexuality Studies Program
Cells 2 Society (C2S) The Center on Social Disparities and Health
Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing
Biography
Ph.D (Sociology), University of California, Berkeley (1993). Professor Epstein is a faculty member at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities; a faculty affiliate of the Science in Human Culture Program and of the interdisciplinary graduate cluster in Science Studies; a faculty affiliate in the Gender & Sexuality Studies program; a faculty associate in Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health at the Institute for Policy Research, and a faculty affiliate at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. Before joining the Northwestern faculty in 2009, Epstein spent the preceding 15 years on the faculty at the University of California, San Diego.
Professor Epstein studies the “politics of knowledge”—more specifically, the contested production of expert and especially biomedical knowledge, with an emphasis on the interplay of social movements, experts, and health institutions, and with a focus on the politics of sexuality, gender, and race. His books have received numerous awards, including the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award and the C. Wright Mills Prize. Epstein has published articles in such journals as Social Studies of Science, Body & Society, Sociological Forum, Social Science & Medicine, Theory and Society, and Sexualities.
Professor Epstein is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and residency fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Epstein is a past chair of the Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association. At Northwestern, he and Prof. Héctor Carrillo co-founded the Sexualities Project at Northwestern (SPAN), an initiative that promotes interdisciplinary research and education on sexuality and health in social context.
Courses Taught
Sociology Courses:
SOCIOL 101: Identity and Identification Syllabus
SOCIOL/HUM 220: Health, Biomedicine, Culture, and Society Syllabus
SOCIOL 376 / HUM 370 / GNDR_ST 332: Race/Gender/Sex & Science: Making Identities and Differences Syllabus
Books
THE QUEST FOR SEXUAL HEALTH: How an Elusive Ideal Has Transformed Science, Politics, and Everyday Life
University of Chicago Press, 2022
THREE SHOTS AT PREVENTION: The HPV Vaccine and the Politics of Medicine's Simple Solutions
Johns Hopkins Press, 2010
INCLUSION: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research
University of Chicago Press, 2007
IMPURE SCIENCE: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge
University of California Press, 1996
LEARNING by HEART: AIDS and Schoolchildren in America’s Communities
Rutgers University Press, 1989
Publications
Epstein, Steven, Jaimie Morse, and Kellie Owens. “The Politics of Knowledge in Health and Biomedicine.” Pp. 481-491 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Studies, ed. Ulrike Felt and Alan Irwin. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2024.
“The Meaning and Significance of Lay Expertise.” Pp. 76-102 in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics, ed. Gil Eyal and Thomas Medvetz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.
“The Elusive Goal of Sexual Health.” Pp. 382-91 in Introducing the New Sexuality Studies, 4th Edition, ed. Nancy L. Fischer and Laurel Westbrook. London: Routledge, 2022.
"From Medicine to Health: The Proliferation and Diversification of Cultural Authority" (with Stefan Timmermans)
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 2022
"Cultivated Co-production: Sexual Health, Human Rights, and the Revision of the ICD"
Social Studies of Science, 2021
"Covid-19 and the Politics of Knowledge"
ASA Footnotes Special Issue on "Sociologists and Sociology During Covid-19,” May-June 2020
"The Proliferation of Sexual Health: Diverse Social Problems and the Legitimation of Sexuality" (with Laura Mamo)
Social Science & Medicine, 2017.
"Mirroring and Mattering: Science, Politics, and the New Feminist Materialism"
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2016
"The Politics of Health Mobilization in the United States: The Promise and Pitfalls of 'Disease Constituencies'"
Social Science & Medicine, 2016.
"'For Men Arousal Is Orientation': Bodily Truthing, Technosexual Scripts, and the Materialization of Sexualities through the Phallometric Test" (with Tom Waidzunas)
Social Studies of Science, 2015
"Immigrant Sexual Citizenship: Intersectional Templates among Mexican Gay Immigrants to the United States" (with Héctor Carrillo)
Citizenship Studies, 2014
"The Pharmaceuticalization of Sexual Risk: Vaccine Development and the New Politics of Cancer Prevention" (with Laura Mamo)
Social Science and Medicine, 2013
*Photo by Tony Rinaldo