FEMINISM AND SCIENCE STUDIES SPRING 2013

Transcription

1 FEMINISM AND SCIENCE STUDIES SPRING 2013 Women's Studies W4311 Barnard College Thursday 9 10:50 a.m. Location TBA Professor Beck Jordan-Young ryoung@barnard.edu Office hours: Tues 3-5 p.m. This seminar will trace a conversation between feminism and science and technology studies (STS). Rejecting the traditional opposition between science and society, science and technology studies (STS) scholars approach science as a fundamentally social process, and scientific knowledge as a human achievement rather than a neutral revelation of objective reality. STS asks not just what is known, but how it is known, how science reflects and reinforces other social relations, and whether and how scientific practice and knowledge might be made more accurate and socially beneficial. Critical examination of science is of great interest to feminists, since "scientific knowledge" is the basis of much political and cultural authority. This term, the seminar on Feminism and Science Studies will have a special focus on scientific categories. What work goes into making the apparently natural categories of scientific analysis? How do boundaries between important categories get (re)drawn, contested, and negotiated? We will begin the seminar with a section on fundamentals in feminist STS. The second section of readings and discussions will engage with the general question of categories and the boundary objects that trouble them. The final section will consider the specific case of sex as a category by examining the science of sex segregation in various domains, including sports, education, and biomedicine. Course requirements: a. Seminar participation. Regular and informed participation in the weekly seminars is required. Reading assignments for each seminar must be completed prior to that seminar, and all assigned texts must be brought to class. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to find out if new readings and assignments were passed out in class. Seminar participation will count for 20% of your final grade. b. Online discussion. Each week, you are expected to post a short (~1 page) written engagement with the readings and/or class discussion. These should include substantive, critical reflections and questions stimulated by the texts (i.e., not simply "loved it/hated it" or summaries of arguments). You may skip the posting assignment for any 2 weeks during the semester without prior permission (except for those weeks when you are the designated discussion leader), but all other weeks they must be posted by 8 pm on the day before class, and there will be no response assignments accepted late. Online discussion will count for 20% of your final grade. c. Short analytic papers. You will write two short (3-5 page) papers in the class in which you will apply a key theory of feminist science studies to denaturalize a familiar scientific category. Each short paper is worth 15% of your final grade.

2 d. Research term paper. Any topic related to issues at the intersection of science and feminism is acceptable, but you must consult with me to make sure the topic is manageable for a term paper. You must submit a brief proposal (3-5 pages plus bibliography) by March 14. The final paper, along with my comments on your proposal, is due on the last day of class. Term paper is worth 30% of your final grade. Details on proposal: The proposal should include a statement of your main question, a sketch of some of the issues you hope to address, and a basic bibliography. Your bibliography must include at least one primary text in the scientific field you are writing about in the term paper; you can t just use secondary sources. If you write about a question of philosophy of science, you must find at least one primary scientific text that helps to illustrate points of discussion, alternative modes of interpretation, etc. I will meet individually with each student to discuss these proposals after they are completed (and while you are preparing the proposal, if you choose). Required Readings: Most readings are available online, either as PDFs through courseworks, or via CLIO as e-books. You must bring a copy of the readings to the class in which we will discuss them. For this reason, you might find it easier to buy a copy of some of the texts we will read in their entirety, rather than printing them from CLIO. Try half.com there are many used copies available for most of these. Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Karen Barad (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Steven Epstein (2007). Inclusion: the politics of difference in medical research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shoshana Magnet. (2011) When Biometrics Fail. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Amade M Charek (2005). The Human Genome Diversity Project. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Annemarie Mol (2002). The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University press. Nelly Oudshoorn (1994). Beyond the Natural Body: An archaeology of sex hormones. New York and London: Routledge. Adele E. Clarke (2005). Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (ON RESERVE)

3 Schedule: Jan 24 Introduction and overview Reading (prior to class): The Association of American Colleges and Universities (1999), Frequently Asked Questions About Feminist Science Studies, Bauchspies, Wenda K; Bellacasa, María Puig De La. (Sep 2009). Feminist science and technology studies: A patchwork of moving subjectivities. An interview with Geoffrey Bowker, Sandra Harding, Anne Marie Mol, Susan Leigh Star and Banu Subramaniam Subjectivity, suppl. Special Issue: Re-tooling Subjectivities v 28, 1: Jan 31 Early feminist critiques of objectivity Who knows? Readings from Feminism and Science. Keller, Evelyn Fox and Helen E. Longino, editors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Keller (chapter 2) - Feminism and Science Haraway (chapter 16) - Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective Harding (chapter 15) Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is Strong Objectivity? Feb 7 Social Studies of Science How is knowledge made? Nelly Oudshoorn (1994). Beyond the Natural Body: An archaeology of sex hormones. New York and London: Routledge. Chapters 1,2,3, 4 & 7 (online in courseworks and on reserve). Annemarie Mol (2002). The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chapter 2 (online in courseworks and on reserve). David J. Hess (1997). Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction. New York and London: NYU Press. Excerpts from Chs 4 and 5 (online in courseworks and on reserve). Feb 14 Assemblages/Entanglement What are facts made of? Karen Barad (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. (See courseworks for updated notes on assigned sections.)

4 Feb 21 Classification and Categories Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, (selections) Susan Leigh Star (1999). The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist. Feb 28 Guest: Dr. Sahar Sadjadi READINGS March 7 Making Human Kinds Ian Hacking (1995). The Looping Effects of Human Kinds. In Sperber, Premack and Premack (eds.), Causal Cognition: A Multi-Disciplinary Debate. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp Evelyn Hammonds (2000). New Technologies of Race. In Gill Kirkup et al, The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader. New York and London: Routledge, Ian Hacking (1998). Rewriting the Soul:Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapter 5, Gender. Ian Hacking (1986). Making up people. In Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality and the Self in Western Thought. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp March 14 Making Human Kinds, Continued: Races Amade M Charek (2005). The Human Genome Diversity Project. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Nadia Abu El-Haj (2007). The Genetic Reinscription of Race. Annual Review of Anthropology 36: March 21 SPRING BREAK - NO CLASS March 28 Making Human Kinds, Continued: Genomic Sex Sarah Richardson (2012). Sexing the X: How the X became the Female Chromosome. Signs. 37 (4). Sarah Richardson (2010). Sexes, species, and genomes: why males and females are not like humans and chimpanzees. Biology and Philosophy 25 (5): Sarah Richardson (2008). When Gender Criticism Becomes Standard Scientific Practice: The Case of Sex Determination Genetics. In Londa Schiebinger (ed), Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

5 April 4 Categories in Action Shoshana Magnet. When Biometrics Fail. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, April 11 Categories in Action, 2: Sex- and race- targeted medicine Steven Epstein (2007). Inclusion: the politics of difference in medical research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (selected chapters TBA see courseworks for details) Kristen Springer, Jeanne Mager Stellman, and Rebecca Jordan-Young (2011). Beyond a Catalogue of Differences: A Theoretical Frame and Good Practice Guidelines for Researching Sex/Gender in Human Health. Social Science and Medicine special issue on Gender and Health, DOI: /j.socscimed Published online 15 June April 18 Categories in Action, 3: Sex-segregation and sports Katrina Karkazis, Rebecca Jordan-Young, Georgiann Davis, and Silvia Camporesi (2012). Out of Bounds? A Critique of Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes. American Journal of Bioethics 12(7): Published online June 14, Also read brief commentaries: Pam R. Sailors, Sarah J. Teetzel & Charlene Weaving, (2012) The Complexities of Sport, Gender, and Drug Testing. The American Journal of Bioethics 12:7, pages Michelle Brett Sutherland, Benjamin Langer & Richard Wassersug, (2012) Getting a Leg Up on the Competition: The Importance of Osteology in Elite Athletics. The American Journal of Bioethics 12:7, pages Lance Wahlert & Autumn Fiester, (2012) Gender Transports: Privileging the Natural in Gender Testing Debates for Intersex and Transgender Athletes. The American Journal of Bioethics 12:7, pages Shari L. Dworkin & Cheryl Cooky, (2012) Sport, Sex Segregation, and Sex Testing: Critical Reflections on This Unjust Marriage. The American Journal of Bioethics 12:7, pages Dan O Connor & Ishan Dasgupta, (2012) Sport Is Arbitrary, and That's OK. The American Journal of Bioethics 12:7, pages Jaime Schultz, (2012) New Standards, Same Refrain: The IAAF's Regulations on Hyperandrogenism. The American Journal of Bioethics 12:7, pages April 25 Categories in Action, 4: Sex-segregation and education INITIAL readings Diane Halpern et al. (2011). The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling. Science 333 (6050): (also see letters in response to this piece in Science)

6 Leonard Sax (2011). Dr. Lise Eliot Evades the Question: Co-author of article in Science carefully avoids answering the question. Psychology Today Sax on Sex blog. Published September 27, Accessed January 4, 2013 at (Additional readings to be collectively decided by the class; nominations will be made online during week of April 11.) May 2 Last Class: Final Paper Discussion/Brief presentations No additional readings