Piper Sledge

Interests

No activities entered.

Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Sledge, P. (2021).

  Bodies Unbound: Gender-Specific Cancer and Biolegitimacy

  . Rutgers University Press.

Chapters

• Sledge, P. (2023). Beauty, Breasts, and Meaning After Mastectomy. In Interpreting the Body: Between Meaning and Materiality. Bristol University Press.
• Sledge, P. (2019). Male breast cancer in the public imagination. In Oxford Handbook of Sociology of the Body and Embodiment. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190842475.013.16
  More info

  Breast cancer in American culture is intrinsically tied to normative ideologies of femininity. Within the highly visible public discourse about breast cancer, men with the disease (both transgender and cisgender) remain nearly invisible. The very presence of breast cancer in men is unthinkable precisely because its presence challenges the association of femininity with breasts. In this chapter I explore the ways that male breast cancer emerges in public discourse in order to explore the ways in normative expectations of masculinity emerge as a narrative framework for bringing trans and cis men into the breast cancer conversation as well as the ways that masculinity is deployed differentially in representing breast cancer in these two groups of men.

Journals/Publications

• Daniel, K. J., Smith, J. R., Ballmer, S., Bristol, W., Driggers, J. C., Effler, A., Evans, M., Hoover, J., Kuns, K., Landry, M., Lovelace, G., Lukinbeal, C., Mandic, V., Pham, K., Read, J., Russell, J. B., Schiettekatte, F., Schofield, R. M., Scholz, C. A., , Shoemaker, D. H., et al. (2025). Criteria for identifying and evaluating locations that could potentially host the Cosmic Explorer observatories. Review of Scientific Instruments, 96(Issue 1). doi:10.1063/5.0242016
  More info

  Cosmic Explorer is a next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave observatory that is being designed in the 2020s and is envisioned to begin operations in the 2030s together with the Einstein Telescope in Europe. The Cosmic Explorer concept currently consists of two widely separated L-shaped observatories in the United States, one with 40 km-long arms and the other with 20 km-long arms. This order of magnitude increase in scale with respect to the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories will, together with technological improvements, deliver an order of magnitude greater astronomical reach, allowing access to gravitational waves from remnants of the first stars and opening a wide discovery aperture to the novel and unknown. In addition to pushing the reach of gravitational-wave astronomy, Cosmic Explorer endeavors to approach the lifecycle of large scientific facilities in a way that prioritizes mutually beneficial relationships with local and Indigenous communities. This article describes the (scientific, cost and access, and social) criteria that will be used to identify and evaluate locations that could potentially host the Cosmic Explorer observatories.
• Sledge, P., & Rice, C. (2025).

  Reimagining the Potential of Feminist Epistemologies in Science: Epistemic Achievements, Social Structure, and Diversity

  . Feminist Philosophy Quarterly, 11(2). doi:https://doi.org/10.5206/fpq/2025.2.18855
• Sledge, P. (2019). From decision to incision: Ideologies of gender in surgical cancer care. Social Science and Medicine, 239. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112550
  More info

  In this paper, I draw on the narratives of 57 individuals whose gender identities and decisions about their bodies trouble the medical protocols for breast and gynecological cancer care. I focus here on the decision-making process for three groups of elective surgeries: hysterectomy, prophylactic bilateral and contralateral mastectomy, and breast reconstruction. These elective surgeries illustrate places in medical interactions where patients and providers rely on frames of gender to determine whether a given surgery is an appropriate option for cancer prevention or care. These cases also explain how patient experiences of medical interactions are shaped by and thus reproduce ideologies of gender through the bodies of patients. While clinical practice and medical decisions are supposedly determined through the principles of evidence-based medicine and patient-centered care, I show that ideas about gender can actually supersede both medical evidence and patient desires for their bodies in the care of gynecological and breast cancers.