Windows in Space and Time
Windows in Space and Time: A Personal Perspective on Birth and Death Robbie Davis-Floyd This article appears in Birth: Issues in Perinatal Care, Vol. 30( 4):272-277, Dec. 2003. The author gives permission for its reproduction. My daughter was born through a window in my uterus, and she died through the windshield of her car. I don’t know what to make of this beginning that became an ending. There are easy parallels: cesarean birth is a...
Read MoreThe Art of Grieving Gracefully
The Art of Grieving Gracefully: Robbie Davis-Floyd’s Suggestions for Coping with Loss and Pain Begun in January 2002, completed for the moment June 2005 My daughter Peyton Elizabeth Floyd died as the result of a car accident in September 2000, four days before her 21st birthday. These are some of the things I learned from the experience of coping with this devastating loss. They begin with suggestions for the immediate period after a loved one’s death, and move on to the different...
Read MoreDying As Medical Performance:
Dying As Medical Performance: The Oncologist As Charon Megan Biesele and Robbie Davis-Floyd In The Performance of Healing Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman, eds. New York: Routledge, 1996:291-322. I think EVERYTHING in the universe is interconnected. And there are some interconnections we haven’t been conscious of, and they’ll come out sooner or later. Probably later, because knowing the AMA’s grip on things, it’s going to take a long time, and it’s going to...
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Robbie Davis-Floyd PhD, Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology and Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Texas Austin, is a medical anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of reproduction. An international speaker and researcher, she is author of over 80 articles and of Birth as an American Rite of Passage (1992, 2004); coauthor of From Doctor to Healer: The Transformative Journey (1998); and coeditor of ten collections, including Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (1997); Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots (1998); and Mainstreaming Midwives: The Politics of Change (2006). Her latest is Birth Models That Work (2009), an edited collection highlighting excellent models of birth care around the world. This collection will be followed by Volume II: Birth Models on the Global Edge, coedited with Betty-Anne Daviss (forthcoming 2012). Her research on global trends and transformations in childbirth, obstetrics, and midwifery is ongoing. Robbie currently also serves as Editor for the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative (IMBCI) and Board Member of the International MotherBaby Childbirth Organization (IMBCO).