Patricia Boling is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. She is interested in how issues housed in the private sphere of the family get translated into negotiable political issues, and has written a book about the politics of intimate life, edited a book on new reproductive technologies, and authored various articles and chapters related to public-private distinctions in the US and in Japan. Having lived in Japan for three years, her research agenda has considered various practices that mostly occur in the intimacy of the body or family that raise