Rayna Rapp

Rayna Rapp (pen name Rayna R. Reiter ) is a professor and associate chair of anthropology at New York University, specializing in gender and health; the politics of reproduction; science, technology, and genetics; and disability in the United States and Europe. She has contributed over 80 published works to the field of anthropology, independently, as a co-author, editor, and foreword-writing, including Robbie Davis-Floyd and Carolyn Sargent's Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge. Her 1999 book, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, received multiple awards upon release and has been praised for providing "invaluable insights into the first generation of women who had to decide whether or not to terminate their pregnancies on the basis of amniocentesis result". She co-authored many articles with Faye Ginsburg, including Enabling Disability: Rewriting Kinship, Reimagining Citizenship, a topic the pair has continued to research.

Education and career Rapp received her PhD from the University of Michigan in 1973 after completing her bachelor's (with honors) and master's degrees from 1964 to 1969, each in anthropology. She published Testing Women, Testing the Women in 1999 after fifteen years of field work during her time there.

Rapp has spoken at multiple universities and conferences around the United States and Europe, and the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. and Elise Andaya.

Rapp believes "there is 'a widening chasm' between the medical-scientific utopian dreams of human perfectibility and the public's understanding of human diversity and impairment". Her current project is projected to concern the relationships between neuroscience, disability, neurodiversity, familial structures, and activism. The pair have also explored "disability consciousness and cultural innovation in special education". In that collection, Ginsburg and Rapp recall Shellee Colen's idea of "stratified reproduction", which they define as: "The power relations by which some categories of people are empowered to nurture and reproduce, while others are disempowered." Karen-Sue Taussig identifies the importance of reproduction in anthropology and points out the highly gendered nature of this discipline: in the collection, 28 of the pieces are by females with 2 male co-authors. Carolyn Sargent has praised the collection for "effectively [tracing] the intersections between global dynamics and local cultural logic and social relations." The work has also been identified as highlighting the intersections between reproduction, kinship, the body, and sexuality. Nash views the collection as simultaneously promoting the study and understanding of both women and anthropology. The book examines the effects of the routinization of fetal diagnosis and analyzes its cultural and social significance in a U.S. context, positing that pregnant women's experience with amniocentesis is deeply influenced by gender, race, and class. Rapp drew on her own experience with amniocentesis in her approach towards the book, participating in fifteen years of fieldwork and engaging with laboratory technicians, geneticists, support groups (of women who terminated pregnancies and families with disabled children), families of children with Down syndrome, genetic counselors, women who underwent amniocentesis or who refused the test, and some male partners. 2002 GAD Centennial Distinguished Lecture, American Anthropological Association 1999 Diana Forsythe Prize, Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing 1999 Basker Book Prize, Society for Medical Anthropology 1999 Senior Book Prize, American Ethnological Society 2003 Staley Prize, School of American Research