Description: Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz is an expert in U.S. feminism, rhetoric, and reproductive politics at the University of Iowa.
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz is F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Her expertise includes rhetoric, cultural studies, reproductive politics, and feminisms.
In her first book, Homeland Maternity: US Security Culture and the New Reproductive Regime (University of Illinois Press, 2019), Dr. Fixmer-Oraiz examines cultural alignments between motherhood and nation in the homeland security state. Tracing the recent rhetorical history of reproductive politics in the United States, Homeland Maternity clarifies the communicative challenges facing advocates for reproductive justice. She has also published articles on rhetoric and reproduction, the commercial surrogacy
Current research includes a book project with Dr. Sharon Yam that explores how feminist reproductive health care providers and advocates are grappling with the complexities of gender in pregnancy, childbirth, and family formation. Fixmer-Oraiz is also working with Jamie Brooks Robertson on a book about the intimate politics of belonging and community building for a more just world.