Sociology/STS/Gender & Women’s Studies 611
Feminist Science Studies
Spring 2016
Tuesday 2:45-5:15pm
Joan H. Fujimura
Phone: 265-2724 Email: fujimura@ssc.wisc.edu
Office: 7101 Social Science
This course examines different perspectives on issues in the study of gender, science, and technology. Topics include the historical and contemporary studies of technoscientific and medical constructions of sex/gender differences; the impact of gender (and race) on scientific and biomedical productions; feminist critiques of scientific theories and methods; feminist proposals of new epistemologies; the work of women in science; and debates on feminist epistemologies.
The issues we will discuss include methodological/theoretical and substantive concerns. Our questions will include: Is science gendered? Does the presence or absence of women in science create different kinds of scientific knowledge? How do our cultural conceptions of sex/gender influence our scientific knowledge and technologies? Does the influence extend to all the sciences including the biological, medical sciences, and physical sciences as well? How do scientific and technological developments contribute to our understandings and productions of sex/gender? We will also consider how scientific constructions of race differences overlap with and complicate scientific constructions of sex/gender differences. Finally, we will consider what effect feminist (and race) critiques of techno-scientific work have had.