Science, and Technology, Gender, and Sexuality

Various faculty members try to think across the traditional divide between the social sciences and humanities on one side, and the so-called “hard” sciences on the other. They are examining the history of Enlightenment science to understand how methods, ideas about gender, reproduction, sexuality, and other issues were formulated in the early Enlightenment period and continue to shape the social and intellectual landscape in which we live. They examine these questions through historical concepts, such as Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, and through contemporary history and philosophy of science literatures. Others examine contemporary issues such as sexuality, the border between the human/animal, new technologies and their consequences, embodiment, reproduction, bioethics, and materialist re-readings of subjectivity.