Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each of China’s twenty-two provinces, the biggest of which screen some three thousand to four thousand potential donors each year. Given the estimated one to two million azoospermic men--those who are unable to produce their own sperm--the demand remains insatiable. China’s twenty-two sperm banks cannot keep up, spurring sperm bank directors to publicly lament chronic shortages and even warn of a national ‘sperm crisis’ (jingzi weiji). Ayo Wahlberg book Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China (U California Press, 2018) explores the issues behind the crisis, including declining sperm quality in the country due to environmental pollution, as well as a chronic national shortage of donors. In doing so, Wahlberg outlines the specific style of Chinese sperm banking that has emerged, shaped by the particular cultural, juridical, economic and social configurations that make up China’s restrictive reproductive complex. Good Quality shows how this high-throughput style shapes the ways in which men experience donation and how sperm is made available to couples who can afford it. Victoria Oana Lupascu is a PhD candidate in dual-title doctoral program in Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her areas of interest include 20th and 21st Chinese literature and visual art, medical humanities and Global South studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episoder(496)

Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

Today I spoke with Juliane Maxwald abut her new book Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality (Taylor & Francis, 2025). Maxwald bridges psychoanalytic theory with cont...

21 Jan 50min

Elwin Hofman et al. eds., "The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe" (Leuven UP, 2022)

Elwin Hofman et al. eds., "The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe" (Leuven UP, 2022)

Elwin Hofman joins Jana Byars to talk about the volume he edited with Magaly Rodríguez García & Pieter Vanhees, The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe (Leuven UP, 2022)...

17 Jan 50min

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass

In Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of A Former Badass (Street Noise Books, 2025), Professor Cara Gormally draws us into the familiar academic world of chronic busyness. In pan...

16 Jan 39min

Zoë McGee, "Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel" (Manchester UP, 2025)

Zoë McGee, "Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel" (Manchester UP, 2025)

What do #MeToo and Jane Austen have in common? More than you might think. Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. Dr Zoë McGee reve...

15 Jan 1h 3min

Sam Fullerton, "Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England" (Manchester UP, 2026)

Sam Fullerton, "Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England" (Manchester UP, 2026)

Samuel Fullerton joins Jana Byars to talk about Sexual Politics in Revolutionary England (Manchester UP 2024) to celebrate its paperback release. It recounts a dramatic transformation in English sexua...

15 Jan 53min

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass

In Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of A Former Badass (Street Noise Books, 2025), Professor Cara Gormally draws us into the familiar academic world of chronic busyness. In pan...

15 Jan 39min

Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)

Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women's Labor (Rutgers University Press, 2025) by Dr. Julia Meszaros offers a provocative exploration of the international dating industry, c...

12 Jan 40min

Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)

Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)

Human trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has de...

11 Jan 58min

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