Feminist and Anti-Racist Science Studies in the United States

Catalog description

Race and gender are social categories, yet science has often treated them as natural kinds. This course bridges the anthropology and history of science and studies of sex, gender, race, and sexuality, interrogating the changing status of such categories in light of scientific inquiry and adjudication. How has science contributed to the construction (and critique) of such categories? How have notions of gender and race been inflected by scientific commitments to "nature," "life," and "reason? Drawing on texts from science studies, gender studies, queer theory, and intersectional feminism, this course will address the following four lines of inquiry: (1) What is the scientific genealogy of socially constructed categories such as sex, gender, sexuality, and race? How have such classifications been produced and sustained by scientific authority, how have they been used to mark sameness and difference, and what have been the lived experiences of the subjects of those differences? (2) How, in turn, have sex, gender, race, and sexuality informed the attendant methods and practices used to study it? (3) Finally, what is the current state of feminist science studies? Where is feminist science studies headed, and what new positions and commitments will be voiced and debated in coming years? " Among others, we will read the work of Evelyn Fox Keller, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Elizabeth Wilson, Sarah Franklin, Charis Thompson, Mel Chen, Lochlann Jain, and Alondra Nelson. Weekly reading will range from 80-100 pages; students are expected to take active and thoughtful participation in discussion. Students will also be graded on one research paper that they will pursue throughout the semester, with smaller assignments (e.g., annotated bibliography, abstract, outline) building toward the final paper and presentation.How have notions of gender and race been inflected by scientific…