Full Description
In a stimulating interchange between feminist studies and biology, Banu Subramaniam explores how her dissertation on flower color variation in morning glories launched her on an intellectual odyssey that engaged the feminist studies of sciences in the experimental practices of science by tracing the central and critical idea of variation in biology.
Subramaniam reveals the histories of eugenics and genetics and their impact on the metaphorical understandings of difference and diversity that permeate common understandings of differences among people exist in contexts that seem distant from the so-called objective hard sciences. Journeying into interdisciplinary areas that range from the social history of plants to speculative fiction, Subramaniam uncovers key relationships between the life sciences, women's studies, evolutionary and invasive biology, and the history of ecology, and how ideas of diversity and difference emerged and persist in each field.
Contents
CoverTitle PageCopyrightContentsPreface. The Red Queen Runneth: On InterdisciplinarityAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. Interdisciplinary Hauntings: The Ghostly World of NatureculturesPart I. Genealogies of Variation: The Case of Morning Glory Flowers1. Thigmatropic Tales: On the Politics and Social Lives of Morning Glories2. A Genealogy of Variation: The Enduring Debate on Human Differences3. Singing the Morning Glory Blues: A Fictional SciencePart II. Geographies of Variation: The Case of Invasion Biology4. Alien Nation: A Recent Biography5. My Experiments with Truth: Studying the Biology of Invasions6. Aliens of the World Unite!: A Meditation on Belonging in a Multispecies WorldPart III. Biographies of Variation: The Case of Women in the Sciences7. Through the Prism of Objectivity: Dispersions of Identity, Culture, Science8. Resistance Is Futile! You Will Be Assimilated: Gender and the Making of Scientists9. The Emperor's New Clothes: Revisiting the Question of Women in the SciencesConclusion. New Cartographies of Variation: The Future of Feminist Science StudiesNotesReferencesIndex