Barbara Katz Rothman, (b. 1948) Ph.D.(NYU, 1979) is Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York and the author of numerous books. Her work is interdisciplinary and international; its scope encompasses medical sociology, childbirth and midwifery issues, bioethics, race, disability, and the sociology of knowledge.
In Labor (Norton, 1982 and 1991), updated and rewritten as Laboring On with co-author Wendy Simonds (Routledge, 2007)
The Tentative Pregnancy, originally published in 1986 (Viking, Norton edition 1993) the first book length study of women’s experiences with prenatal testing, was published in Germany in 1991
Recreating Motherhood (Norton, 1989 and revised, Rutgers University Press 2000) was the 1991 recipient of the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association
Centuries of Solace: Expressions of Maternal Grief in Popular Literature (Temple University Press, 1992), co-authored with Wendy Simonds
The Encyclopedia of Childbearing (Oryx Press and Holt Publishers, 1993), named an Outstanding Reference Book by the American Library Association
The Book of Life (Beacon, 2001, originally titled Genetic Maps and Human Imaginations, Norton, 1998)
Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption (Beacon, 2005)
Advances in Medical Sociology, series editor
Bioethical Issues, Sociological Perspectives (Elsevier, 2008), editor with Elizabeth Armstrong and Rebecca Tiger
Barbara Katz Rothman is widely published in both popular and scholarly sources, including Social Problems, Virtual Mentor of the AMA, MIDIRS Midwifery Digest, Annual Review of Health Sciences of Australia, The Japanese Midwifery Journal, The MT. Sinai Journal of Medicine, Gender & Society, Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy, NOVA Law Review, The Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, MS., Glamour, European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, MAMM, Conscience, Midwifery Today, Legal Affairs.
Katz Rothman has lectured widely throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Groningen, 1995. Her books have been translated into many languages, including Japanese and Finnish.
She was a visiting professor at the Universität Osnabrück, Germany, (2002), visiting professor in the International Masters in Health and Society at the Charite in Berlin, and a Leverhulme Professor at the University of Plymouth (2003) in the United Kingdom, where she has an ongoing visiting Professorship.
Katz Rothman is past president of two national sociological professional associations, Sociologists for Women in Society, from which she won the Mentoring Award, and the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which has awarded her the Lee Founders Award.