We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we te... more We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we tell about the status of science in women's studies and a desire to see women's studies as a critical locus of meaningful engagement with science. At the start of our collaboration, we began to debate the status of science in women's studies, the humanities , and in the culture at large. The claim that science is undervalued in the humanities resonated strongly with Banu, while Angie saw an over-valuation, an automatic respect for science among humanists, mirroring that of the larger culture. 1 Why did we perceive our field so differ-ently? As a scientist teaching in the humanities, Banu bemoans the easy dismissal of science as a resource for feminism and the general lack of critical engagement with science. She is constantly frustrated by rampant science-and technophobia, accompanied by a refusal to explore even elementary aspects of scientific investigation. As someone trained in women's studies, who began studying science and scientists centrally, Angie encountered a reverence toward science that garnered two frequent responses to her research: first, curiosity and often naive interest 1. We have chosen to use our first names here, as we draw extensively upon and want to highlight traditions of " conversations " in feminist scholarship and collaborative interdisciplinary thinking-together in feminist science studies. The choice marks this talking, debating, explaining, and thinking together as a method where intimacy enables and yields insight.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2016
This essay is a speculative exploration into the uses of a materialism grounded in the epistemolo... more This essay is a speculative exploration into the uses of a materialism grounded in the epistemological interventions of feminist and postcolonial science studies and queer historicizations of sexuality. It is also a meditation on the materialist turn in feminist theory from a critical science studies perspective. It offers a creative approach to the materiality of embodiment, an approach that is critically alert to the ways in which scientific disciplinary ways of knowing have been constructed as less mediated access to that materiality than humanistic ones. Rather than turning to a materialist genealogy that suggests the importance of science, this essay turns to a genealogy grounded in a queer, feminist, and antiracist vision of the vital body as a source of knowledge and resistance. Reading Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic as Power” as a biology of the erotic to decenter assumptions about sexuality and human nature that shape the field of gene-brain-behavior research on affiliative behavior in general and on monogamy in particular, the essay elaborates a theory of biopossibility. It offers this notion of biopossibility—the complexly mediated capacity to embody certain socially salient traits and differences—as a frame for a queer feminist materialist science studies approach.
This article offers a reading of historical discourses around non/monogamy with attention to thei... more This article offers a reading of historical discourses around non/monogamy with attention to their ‘racial resonances’. These 19th-century discourses helped to naturalize monogamy and to establish it as desirable, moral and feminist (and alternatives as undesirable, immoral and un-feminist). The article’s aim is to suggest that, like those surrounding other aspects of sexuality, discourses around non/monogamy cannot be adequately contextualized-or challenged-without attention to the ways in which they are constituted through race.
We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we te... more We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we tell about the status of science in women's studies and a desire to see women's studies as a critical locus of meaningful engagement with science. At the start of our collaboration, we began to debate the status of science in women's studies, the humanities , and in the culture at large. The claim that science is undervalued in the humanities resonated strongly with Banu, while Angie saw an over-valuation, an automatic respect for science among humanists, mirroring that of the larger culture. 1 Why did we perceive our field so differ-ently? As a scientist teaching in the humanities, Banu bemoans the easy dismissal of science as a resource for feminism and the general lack of critical engagement with science. She is constantly frustrated by rampant science-and technophobia, accompanied by a refusal to explore even elementary aspects of scientific investigation. As someone trained in women's studies, who began studying science and scientists centrally, Angie encountered a reverence toward science that garnered two frequent responses to her research: first, curiosity and often naive interest 1. We have chosen to use our first names here, as we draw extensively upon and want to highlight traditions of " conversations " in feminist scholarship and collaborative interdisciplinary thinking-together in feminist science studies. The choice marks this talking, debating, explaining, and thinking together as a method where intimacy enables and yields insight.
We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we te... more We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we tell about the status of science in women's studies and a desire to see women's studies as a critical locus of meaningful engagement with science. At the start of our collaboration, we began to debate the status of science in women's studies, the humanities , and in the culture at large. The claim that science is undervalued in the humanities resonated strongly with Banu, while Angie saw an over-valuation, an automatic respect for science among humanists, mirroring that of the larger culture. 1 Why did we perceive our field so differ-ently? As a scientist teaching in the humanities, Banu bemoans the easy dismissal of science as a resource for feminism and the general lack of critical engagement with science. She is constantly frustrated by rampant science-and technophobia, accompanied by a refusal to explore even elementary aspects of scientific investigation. As someone trained in women's studies, who began studying science and scientists centrally, Angie encountered a reverence toward science that garnered two frequent responses to her research: first, curiosity and often naive interest 1. We have chosen to use our first names here, as we draw extensively upon and want to highlight traditions of " conversations " in feminist scholarship and collaborative interdisciplinary thinking-together in feminist science studies. The choice marks this talking, debating, explaining, and thinking together as a method where intimacy enables and yields insight.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2016
This essay is a speculative exploration into the uses of a materialism grounded in the epistemolo... more This essay is a speculative exploration into the uses of a materialism grounded in the epistemological interventions of feminist and postcolonial science studies and queer historicizations of sexuality. It is also a meditation on the materialist turn in feminist theory from a critical science studies perspective. It offers a creative approach to the materiality of embodiment, an approach that is critically alert to the ways in which scientific disciplinary ways of knowing have been constructed as less mediated access to that materiality than humanistic ones. Rather than turning to a materialist genealogy that suggests the importance of science, this essay turns to a genealogy grounded in a queer, feminist, and antiracist vision of the vital body as a source of knowledge and resistance. Reading Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic as Power” as a biology of the erotic to decenter assumptions about sexuality and human nature that shape the field of gene-brain-behavior research on affiliative behavior in general and on monogamy in particular, the essay elaborates a theory of biopossibility. It offers this notion of biopossibility—the complexly mediated capacity to embody certain socially salient traits and differences—as a frame for a queer feminist materialist science studies approach.
This article offers a reading of historical discourses around non/monogamy with attention to thei... more This article offers a reading of historical discourses around non/monogamy with attention to their ‘racial resonances’. These 19th-century discourses helped to naturalize monogamy and to establish it as desirable, moral and feminist (and alternatives as undesirable, immoral and un-feminist). The article’s aim is to suggest that, like those surrounding other aspects of sexuality, discourses around non/monogamy cannot be adequately contextualized-or challenged-without attention to the ways in which they are constituted through race.
We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we te... more We began this collaboration by recognizing two kindred interests: investment in the stories we tell about the status of science in women's studies and a desire to see women's studies as a critical locus of meaningful engagement with science. At the start of our collaboration, we began to debate the status of science in women's studies, the humanities , and in the culture at large. The claim that science is undervalued in the humanities resonated strongly with Banu, while Angie saw an over-valuation, an automatic respect for science among humanists, mirroring that of the larger culture. 1 Why did we perceive our field so differ-ently? As a scientist teaching in the humanities, Banu bemoans the easy dismissal of science as a resource for feminism and the general lack of critical engagement with science. She is constantly frustrated by rampant science-and technophobia, accompanied by a refusal to explore even elementary aspects of scientific investigation. As someone trained in women's studies, who began studying science and scientists centrally, Angie encountered a reverence toward science that garnered two frequent responses to her research: first, curiosity and often naive interest 1. We have chosen to use our first names here, as we draw extensively upon and want to highlight traditions of " conversations " in feminist scholarship and collaborative interdisciplinary thinking-together in feminist science studies. The choice marks this talking, debating, explaining, and thinking together as a method where intimacy enables and yields insight.
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Papers by Angie Willey