Associate Professor of Women's Studies
krudy@acpub.duke.edu
Philosophically, Professor Rudy's interest in medical
ethics stems from postmodernist theory about the individual and
the body: What is medicine's proper relationship to the body?
What should society do about it? And even more broadly, what
does it mean to be human? Dr. Rudy uses a variety of scholarly
approaches to these questions.
Interconnected studies in religion, politics, feminism and medical
ethics make Dr. Rudy a unique kind of scholar. Picking up after
the last century's breakdown of traditional theory, she belongs
to a new breed of intellectual, forging creative linkages among
established disciplines. Her innovative work is published in journals
as widely diverse as the Journal of Medical Humanities and Medical
Humanities Review, Theology Today, Cultural Studies, and Women
and Politics.
In the last few years, Dr. Rudy has become interested in the
ethics of animals and the animal human boundary. This touches on medicine in
a number of way: how the meat we eat, especially when it is factory farmed
affects our bodies, how pets lead us to greater health, and how the planet
and its habitats are now deeply endangered. Along with her colleague
Robyn Wiegman, Dr. Rudy is co-founder of the Earth
to Table group that works
on food security and sustainability.
Dr. Rudy's teaching at Duke includes a number of cross-listed courses,
such as "Genetic and Reproductive Ethics," which she describes as "an
examination of new frontiers of genetic manipulation and reproductive therapies,
and of ethical debates surrounding surrogate motherhood, abortion, and cloning
through the lenses of both traditional ethical inquiry and feminist thought." Dr.
Rudy is on the Steering Committee for the Kenan Ethics Program at Duke and
participates in the Duke-UNC Bioethics Research Group. She is also active
in politics and is a frequent speaker to academic audiences and the public
on the political issues surrounding AIDS, same sex marriage, and foster care.
Her books include Beyond Pro-Life and Pro-Choice: Moral Diversity in the
Abortion Debate (Beacon, 1996), and Sex and the Church: Gender, Homosexuality
and Contemporary Christian Politics (Beacon, 1997). Her new book, The
Ethics of Earthlings, focuses on animals and environmental sustainability.
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