EMILY YORK communication & science studies Department of Communication University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0503 303-653-6262 OVERVIEW My dissertation is titled Nanodreams and Nanoworlds: The Emergence and Disciplinary Formation of Nanoengineering. I work under the direction of Professor Valerie Hartouni. I have drafted my dissertation and am currently revising it with the support of a UC San Diego Science Studies Program Fellowship. I expect to defend in late winter or early spring of 2016. My research draws on STS, feminist theory, cultural studies, and communication studies to examine the emerging field of nanoengineering through its institutionalization, political economy, practices, research, and pedagogy. It is based on a 4-year ethnography of one of the world s first nanoengineering departments and undergraduate majors. See attached abstract. feminist science studies societal dimensions of emerging technologies cultural studies of technology EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO SAN DIEGO, CA Ph.D. Candidate, Communication & Science Studies 2013 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CHICAGO, IL M.S. Computer Science 2001 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO CHICAGO, IL A.B. with honors, English Language & Literature 2000 TEACHING DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION UCSD Instructor of Record 2013-2016 Introduction to Communication Concepts of Freedom Surveillance, the Media, and the Risk Society Science Fiction (in 2016) Teaching Assistant 2011-2013 Interpretive Strategies; Introduction to Communication; The Film Industry; Gender, Labor, and Culture in the Global Economy; Communication and Culture; Methods of Media Production; Introduction to Communication and Human Information Processing DIMENSIONS OF CULTURE, THURGOOD MARSHALL WRITING PROGRAM UCSD Teaching Assistant 2014-15 INTERNATIONAL TRITON TRANSITION WRITING PROGRAM UCSD Teaching Assistant 2014
PUBLICATIONS Smaller is Better? Learning an Ethos and Worldview in Nanoengineering Education. NanoEthics http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11569-015-0232-3 August 2015, Volume 9, Issue 2, pp 109-122. Nanodreams and Nanoworlds: Fantastic Voyage as a Fantastic Origin Story. Configurations. Forthcoming January 2016. APPOINTMENTS, FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HUMANITIES RESEARCH INSTITUTE SPRING 2015 UC California Studies Consortium Graduate Research Travel Grant TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN FALL 2014 Visiting Fellowship, Innovation Society Today (Department of Sociology) Travel and Living Stipend. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ FALL 2013 Visiting Scholar, Science and Justice Research Center UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO 2011-2015 Travel Grants (7) (Communication Department) Travel Grants (5) (Science Studies Program) Travel Grant (Dean of Social Sciences) Department Fellowship (Communication Department) Dissertation Writing Fellowship (1) (Communication Department) Dissertation Writing Fellowships (2) (Science Studies Program) VARIOUS 2013 S.NET 2013 Early Career Scholar Conference Funding University of Vienna Travel Grant, Governing Futures Conference CIGA Travel Grant, Dilemmas of Choice Workshop PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES Co-Editor, special issue 12 (2016) of Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology: Multimodalities: Reflections on Feminist Communicative Practices. Committee Member, Intellectual Community, Graduate Enrichment, Dept. Communication, 2015-16. Graduate Student Representative, Department External Review, Dept. Communication, 2014-15. Convener, Comics Studies Research Group, funded by the UCSD Center for the Humanities, 2014-15. Organized and secured funding for an interdisciplinary research group of faculty and graduate students representing 6 departments to explore comics in popular and academic cultures.
Organizer, Student Choice Speaker two-day event, including graduate student workshop for the UCSD Science Studies Program, with Professor Karen Barad (Feminist Studies, UC-Santa Cruz), 2014. Student Board Member & Co-Vice Chair, Student Pugwash. A non-profit organization that promotes responsibility in science and technology: http://www.spusa.org/about/about.html, 2012-13. Graduate Student Member, Something from Nothing: Fearless Speculations in Art, Science, and Activism, a research group funded by the UCSD Center for the Humanities, 2012-13. Graduate Student Member, Graduate Curriculum Committee, Dept. Communication, 2012-14. Co-organizer, Experts-in-Training: Professional Socialization in STEM and Medicine panel, Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). San Diego, CA. 2013. Manuscript Reviewer, Social Studies of Science, 2014; NanoEthics, 2014. EMPLOYMENT SAN DIEGO TECHNOLOGY ARCHIVE SAN DIEGO, CA Archive Assistant 2011-2012 The San Diego Technology Archive, organized through the UC San Diego Library, archives historical documents pertaining to local technology development in San Diego. Responsibilities: cataloguing materials, identifying and marking up points of interest in source material to enable digital tagging, and analyzing and editing interview materials. FRIEDRICH, KLATT & ASSOCIATES CHICAGO, IL Managing Consultant 2001-2011 FK&A is a small software consulting firm that develops customized software applications for small to mid-size firms. Responsibilities: managing client relations; requirements gathering and analysis; software programming (Windows applications primarily in C#); database programming, analysis, reporting, and integration into Windows applications (SQL querying and programming, Crystal Reports, multidimensional cube analysis); project management. PRESENTATIONS 2015 Producing Human and Intellectual Capital: Nanoengineering in the University 4S Annual Meeting. Denver, Colorado. (Upcoming) Public Universities and Private Capital: An Ethnography AAA Annual Meeting. Denver, Colorado. (Upcoming) Another Engineering School is Possible: Imagining a Critical Nanoengineering Program Cultural Studies Association Annual Meeting. Riverside, California.
Critical Thinking as a Practice of Freedom (but also as a culturally defined practice) Invited panelist on the Fostering Equitable and Inclusive Learning Environments: Thinking and Writing at UC San Diego panel for the Teaching Diversity 2015 conference. U C San Diego. San Diego, California. 2014 Invited Talk: Innovation, Benefit, and Society : Key Terms in the Institutionalization of Nanoengineering Innovation Society Today Colloquium. Technische Universität-Berlin. Berlin, Germany. Invited Talk: Understanding Cultural Production and Identity Formation in the Institutionalization of a New Discipline: Methods Forschungswerkstatt Wissenschaftssoziologie Colloquium. Technische Universität-Berlin. Berlin, Germany. Doing Things With Comics: Thinking and Communicating Research Multimodally Annual Comic-Con Meeting. San Diego, California. Poster. Self-Assembly and the Invisible Hand: Logics of the Enlightenment in Nano Fabrication Interruptions: Sciences, Feminisms, Knowledges. Sponsored by the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, UC-Berkeley. Berkeley, California. 2013 Smaller is Better: Scaling Laws and the Production of a Nanoengineering Identity Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET). Boston, Massachusetts. Knowing-Making Worlds: An Agential Realist Approach to the Emergence and Institutionalization of Nanoengineering. Mattering: Feminism, Science and Materialism. Sponsored by the Graduate Center, City University of New York. 2012 Fantastic Voyage and the Construction of a Nanoengineering Discipline Design and displacement social studies of science and technology (4S/EASST). Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, Denmark. The Co-Production of Nanotechnologies and the Nanoengineer : tracing techno-moral change in an undergraduate nanoengineering major Imagining Techno-Moral Change, EPET Conference 2012. Sponsored by the Centre for Ethics and Politics of Emerging Technologies, Maastricht University. Maastricht, Netherlands. 2011 What is Nanoengineering and Who Are its Practitioners? An exploration of an emerging discipline through its practices, research, and pedagogy Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET). Organized by the Centers for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB). Tempe, Arizona. Poster.
When is Nanoengineering? Constructing the temporal dimension of a new discipline governing futures: imagining, negotiating and taming emerging technosciences. Sponsored by the University of Vienna, Department of Social Studies of Science. Vienna, Austria. Learning Entrepreneurialism in Nanoengineering Education Dilemmas of Choice: Responsibility in Nanotechnology Development. Sponsored by the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and under the patronage of Consorzio Università Rovigo (CUR). Consorzio Università Rovigo. Rovigo, Italy. Producing Technoscientific Futures in the Nanoengineering Classroom Bridging Boundaries in Science & Technology Policy and Studies. Sponsored by STGlobal Consortium, at National Academies/AAAS. Washington, D.C. REFERENCES Professor Valerie Hartouni, Chair Communication, UCSD. vhartouni@ucsd.edu Professor Colin Milburn Gary Snyder Chair in Science and the Humanities, UC-Davis. cnmilburn@ucdavis.edu Professor Charles Thorpe Sociology and Science Studies, UCSD. cthorpe@mail.ucsd.edu Professor Kelly Gates Communication and Science Studies, UCSD. kagates@ucsd.edu Professor Karen Barad Feminist Studies, UC-Santa Cruz. kbarad@ucsc.edu
DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Nanodreams and Nanoworlds: The Emergence and Disciplinary Formation of Nanoengineering This dissertation analyzes the sociotechnical practices through which nanoengineering is produced as a new disciplinary and professional site of innovation for the benefit of society. I argue that innovation constitutes a rationalizing discourse that serves to justify the establishment of a field, department, and major. Additionally, it serves as an organizing logic that constitutes the nanoengineer as an inherently ethical actor, and nanoengineering as a benefactor of a universalized consumer-subject. I contribute an empirically grounded feminist science studies perspective on how material and discursive practices of innovation rationalize, define, and justify a new scientific discipline; how moral and ethical reasoning is figured within technical practices and pedagogies; and how sociocultural, historical, political, and technical imaginaries figure and are themselves refigured in the constitution of nanoengineering. My analysis is based on an ethnography I conducted from 2010-2014 of one of the world s first nanoengineering departments and its new undergraduate nanoengineering major, located at the University of California, San Diego. This included observing most of the undergraduate courses; conducting approximately 90 interviews with faculty, students, and administrators; observing a nanoengineering laboratory; participating in department meetings and events; collaborating with the department to produce a new department newsletter; and analyzing the media used in the department and curriculum. More specifically, my dissertation chapters examine how popular culture is enrolled in the consolidation of a new discipline; how a particular ethos, with a moral stance and value positions, gets taught in the context of technical education; how Enlightenment logics of rational individualism and the invisible hand get worked into the material and discursive practices of self-assembly in the nanoengineering laboratory; how nanoengineering students are produced as human capital, and what this means for the contemporary public university; how nanoengineering is figured as translational research; and how specific cultural objects and discourses already valued by the members of this community might suggest possibilities for enacting a more critical pedagogy that could undergird a critical nanoengineering practice and identity. I present my work in both prose and graphic novel style narrative illustration.