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

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Isabelle Held, "Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies" (Duke UP, 2026)

Isabelle Held, "Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies" (Duke UP, 2026)

Bullet bras, bazookas, bombshells, bikinis. In Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter do...

3 Apr 52min

Satya Shikha Chakraborty, "Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Satya Shikha Chakraborty, "Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India (Cambridge UP, 2025) offers a compelling cultural and social history of ayahs (nannies/maids), by exploring domes...

25 Mars 1h 3min

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025)

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by the women's liberation movement after 1970, marked...

9 Mars 1h 11min

Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)

Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways" (U California Press, 2026)

Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Mattie Armstrong-Price offers a social and cultural history of railway ...

7 Mars 43min

Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)

Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the "Einstein of Sex," grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he's been largely forgotten. In The Ein...

5 Mars 50min

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)

Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025) explores scholarship, practice, and advocacy for Black women’s pursuit of bodily au...

28 Feb 1h 6min

Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Using public storytelling as a driving force, Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Mark D. Steinbe...

21 Feb 1h 3min

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in Me: How Experts Shape Same-Sex Marriage Debates" (Columbia UP, 2025)

In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each countr...

30 Jan 55min

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