After years of trying, I’m going to admit that I don’t know how to describe what I do. I’m an historian, writer, patient advocate, and mother. I guess I do whatever feels really important and maybe doable. Some of that is humanities-based scholarship centered on science and medicine, and some of my scholarship gets called “investigative.” I write a lot of essays about real life, and I often provide service to individuals in need, whether they be reformist clinicians, struggling parents, patient advocacy groups, or adults with traumatic histories.

I gave up tenure in 2005, and I now work part-time as a Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. In fact, I work full-time, but choosing to keep my job at Northwestern “0.5 full time equivalent” (to use the academic administrative language) keeps my set responsibilities reasonable, allowing me to remain highly flexible and productive. My spouse’s income makes up for my wanderings. I would joke that I trade him sex for money, except even if I earned more, I’d still want to seduce him. So what does he get in return? Pretty amazing stories at the end of the day, recounted over a pretty tasty dinner. And a well-adjusted kid conversant in the Freedom of Information Act, sex hormones, and informed consent. (What will he know when he turns 12?)

Feel free to poke around. If you’re interested in knowing a bit more about  my background, you might check out the interview I did with the Atlantic Monthly. If you want to read some of my stuff, and you want something short, I’d recommend the four essays I wrote for the New York Times on sex testing in sports (one, two, three, four). Or if you want to laugh and to think about stuff you probably never have before, try Lavish Dwarf Entertainment (selected for Norton’s annual “Best Creative Non-Fiction” volume). If you feel like crying, consider reading Products of Conception.

If you’d like a taste of the “investigative” historical scholarship I’ve conducted, you could read The Controversy Surrounding “The Man Who Would Be Queen” (my Guggenheim Fellowship-winning work, also covered in the New York Times) or Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association (as covered in Science).

Whether you’re here via my advice to Dan Savage’s readers, or here via my Psychology Today blog, Fetishes I Don’t Get, or my columns for Bioethics Forum, or because you’re my kid’s babysitter and you’re wondering if the rumors about me are true, I hope you enjoy wandering around.Thank you for visiting.