Invisible Labor in the Making of Science

Catalog description

Invisible Labor in the Making of Science is about the people who are concealed, eclipsed, or anonymized in accounts of scientific research. Many scientific workers–including translators, activists, archivists, technicians, curators, and ethics review boards–are absent in publications and omitted from stories of discovery. Professional scientists are often celebrated, yet they are expected to uphold principles of ‘objective’ self-denial. This course will explore these silences and omissions to reveal how invisibilities have shaped twentieth and twenty-first century science. The course modules invites comparisons across geographic, temporal, and disciplinary boundaries. The modules also facilitate different forms of self-reflexive practice, and will open the possibilities of research avenues for students; how we should approach research and narrative method; and how contemporary interest in invisible labor relates to established discursive traditions in the historiography of science and STS.