Daniels, Cynthia R.

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Daniels, Cynthia R.

PERSONAL: Education: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES: Office— Department of Political Science, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, 89 George St., New Brunswick, NJ 08901. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Political scientist, educator and writer. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, associate professor of political science. Previously taught at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and the University of Hawaii.

AWARDS, HONORS: Recipient of fellowships from the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College, the American Association of University Women, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

WRITINGS

(With Maureen Paul and Robert Rosofsky) Family Work & Health: Survey Report Sponsored by Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Women’s Health Unit, Department of Public Health (Boston, MA), 1988.

(Editor, with Eileen Boris) Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1989.

At Women’s Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1993.

(Editor) Feminists Negotiate the State: the Politics of Domestic Violence, University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1997.

(Editor) Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America, St. Martin’s Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Policy Studies Review and Journal of Social History. Contributor to books, including Medicine Unbound: The Human Body and the Limits of Medical Interventions, edited by R. Blank and A. Bonnicksen, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1993;Feminist Frameworks: Alternative Theoretical Accounts of the Relations between Men and Women, 3rd edition, edited by Jaggar and Rothenberg, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1992; and From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom, edited by M. Fried, South End Press, 1990.

SIDELIGHTS: Cynthia R. Daniels is a political scientist who has written and edited books about working, family, and female and male reproductive health. Daniels served as coeditor with Eileen Boris of Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home. The editors provide numerous case studies of the homework issue in the United States, beginning with a history of industrialized homework and including a discussion of how the nature of homework has changed. The essays also explore new policy issues surrounding laws concerning homework. “Most of the essays share a broad concern with the gender, race, and class dynamics surrounding homework, but they offer no consensus on how policymakers should address the issue,” wrote Ruth Milkman in the Business History Review.“This is a book that raises all the right questions but offers few definitive answers.” Milkman added: “Indeed, scholars interested in the topic of homework in the past and present will be indebted to Boris and Daniels for years to come.”

In her book At Women’s Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights, Daniels discusses issues of fetal rights beyond the boundaries of the abortion debate. Specifically, the author is interested in “the pregnant body to expose the inadequacy of the liberal concept of ‘citizen’ which is gendered male,” according to Sally J. Kenney writing in the American Political Science Review. Kenney went on to note: “Daniels carefully examines three legal cases to challenge the ability of classical liberalism’s notions of individualism, privacy, and self-determination to defend women’s rights during pregnancy.” The reviewer also wrote: “Her work is a major contribution to the emerging literature on this important topic.”

As the editor of Lost Fathers: The Politics of Father-lessness in America, the author presents carefully selected writings that present views from both the left and the right about fatherhood, focusing on the political and public debates that surround the importance of fatherhood and a strong nuclear family. Writing in Signs, David S. Gutterman commented that “there are great lessons to be learned from such a collection about the way ideology shapes scholarship, the construction of public policy, and the difficulty of creating conversation about such highly charged moral and political issues.” Mary J. Brustman, writing in the Library Journal, commented that the essays provide “an interesting and multifaceted discussion.”

Daniels explores threats to the male reproductive process in Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction. In addition to discussing the issue of distorted and unfair views of men’s role in the reproductive process, the author goes on to discuss the importance of good male reproductive health and myths such as the idea that men are not as vulnerable to reproductive problems as women. She also explores the role that men’s reproductive health, especially as it is damaged by environmental pollutants, may play in fetal harm. Referring to the book as “intensely argued,” Chronicle of Higher Education contributor Nina C. Ayoub wrote that “the political scientist takes a biological turn, exploring male vulnerabilities that are ignored at our peril.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, June, 1994, Sally J. Kenney, review of At Women’s Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights, p. 467.

Business History Review, winter, 1989, Ruth Milkman, review of Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home, p. 954.

Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2006, Nina C. Ayoub, review of Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction.

Family Matters, autumn, 1999, Carole Jean, review of Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America, p. 81.

Library Journal, June 15, 1998, Mary Jane Brustman, review of Lost Fathers, p. 97.

Political Science Quarterly, fall, 1997, Joyce Gelb, “Fetal Rights, Women’s Rights: Gender Equality in the Workplace,” includes brief discussion of At Women’s Expense, p. 531.

Signs, summer, 2002, David S. Gutterman, review of Lost Fathers, p. 1186.

Times Literary Supplement, November 13, 1998, Melanie Phillips, review of Lost Fathers, p. 12.

Wilson Quarterly, winter, 2005, “Seed Money,” discusses article on procreative compounds coauthored by author, p. 98.