Banu Subramaniam is Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu’s work engages the feminist studies of science in the practices of experimental biology. Author of Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism (University of Washington Press, 2019) Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity (University of Illinois Press, 2014), and coeditor of MEAT! A Transnational Analysis (Duke University Press 2021), Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (Rowman Address: Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA 01003
Synopsis How did plant sexuality come to so hauntingly resemble human sexual formations? How did ... more Synopsis How did plant sexuality come to so hauntingly resemble human sexual formations? How did plant biology come to theorize plant sexuality with binary formulations of male/female, sex/gender, sperm/egg, active males and passive females—all of which resemble western categories of sex, gender, and sexuality? Tracing the extant language of sex and sexuality in plant reproductive biology, we examine the histories of science to explore how plant reproductive biology emerged historically from formations of colonial racial and sexual politics and how evolutionary biology was premised on the imaginations of racialized heterosexual romance. Drawing on key examples, the paper aims to (un)read plant sexuality and sexual anatomy and bodies to imagine new possibilities for plant sex, sexualities, and their relationalities. In short, plant sex and sexuality are not two different objects of inquiry but are intimately related—it is their inter-relation that is the focus of this essay. One of t...
In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon T... more In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. In this essay responding to Traweek's Bernal lecture, Subramaniam explores Traweek’s mentorship in her own work as a feminist STS scholar in biological sciences.
This Lab Meeting took place as a roundtable titled Cyborg Manifestations. Hosted at MIT in Februa... more This Lab Meeting took place as a roundtable titled Cyborg Manifestations. Hosted at MIT in February 2020, it was part of the Boston-area Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality’s (GCWS) series Feminisms Unbound. The introduction maps the history and structure of the GCWS series and highlights how its rigorous commitment to interdisciplinary graduate education fosters feminist science and technology studies (STS) in the Boston area. The introduction also frames the remarks of the roundtable participants, who speak to drag queens, artificial intelligence, plant life, gender and environmental conservation, and objecthood. Five transcripts or “lab reports” highlight how the figure of the cyborg animates and reinvigorates feminist, queer, and trans approaches to technoscience.
In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, the editorial board curators of this special section ask three... more In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, the editorial board curators of this special section ask three interdisciplinary scholars to reflect on the global pandemic.
One spring morning in 1995, ecologist Jayne Belnap walked into a dry grassland in Canyonlands Nat... more One spring morning in 1995, ecologist Jayne Belnap walked into a dry grassland in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, an area that she has been studying for more than 15 years. "I literally stopped and went, 'Oh my God!' she recalls. The natural grasslandwith needle grass, Indian rice grass, saltbush, and the occasional pinyon-juniper treethat Belnap had seen the year before no longer existed; it had become overgrown with 2-foot-high Eurasian cheatgrass. "I was stunned," says Belnap, "It was like the aliens had landed." (Enserink 1999)
Labor has been and continues to be an indispensable category of analysis for radical scholars, as... more Labor has been and continues to be an indispensable category of analysis for radical scholars, as evidenced by the proliferation of new terms—“affective” labor, “immaterial” labor, “digital” labor, and so forth—developed to describe the asymmetrical relations of capital and labor in and across contemporary settings. This essay traces the recent advent of the concept of “biological” or “clinical” labor, exploring (a) the utility of the concept for radical historians and (b) the utility of perspectives from labor history to the studies of “biocapital” found in recent science and technology studies (STS). Placing labor history and STS in conversation (without presupposing clear or stable boundaries around either field of scholarship), the essay probes the meanings and limitations of the concept of “biological labor” from the vantage points of both fields, drawing in particular on critiques of human exceptionalism generated by scholars in animal studies, critical race studies, indigenou...
Synopsis How did plant sexuality come to so hauntingly resemble human sexual formations? How did ... more Synopsis How did plant sexuality come to so hauntingly resemble human sexual formations? How did plant biology come to theorize plant sexuality with binary formulations of male/female, sex/gender, sperm/egg, active males and passive females—all of which resemble western categories of sex, gender, and sexuality? Tracing the extant language of sex and sexuality in plant reproductive biology, we examine the histories of science to explore how plant reproductive biology emerged historically from formations of colonial racial and sexual politics and how evolutionary biology was premised on the imaginations of racialized heterosexual romance. Drawing on key examples, the paper aims to (un)read plant sexuality and sexual anatomy and bodies to imagine new possibilities for plant sex, sexualities, and their relationalities. In short, plant sex and sexuality are not two different objects of inquiry but are intimately related—it is their inter-relation that is the focus of this essay. One of t...
In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon T... more In the 2020 Prague Virtual Conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S), Sharon Traweek was awarded the society’s John D. Bernal Prize jointly with Langdon Winner. The Bernal Prize is awarded annually to individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the field of STS. Prize recipients include founders of the field of STS, along with outstanding scholars who have devoted their careers to the understanding of the social dimensions of science and technology. In this essay responding to Traweek's Bernal lecture, Subramaniam explores Traweek’s mentorship in her own work as a feminist STS scholar in biological sciences.
This Lab Meeting took place as a roundtable titled Cyborg Manifestations. Hosted at MIT in Februa... more This Lab Meeting took place as a roundtable titled Cyborg Manifestations. Hosted at MIT in February 2020, it was part of the Boston-area Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality’s (GCWS) series Feminisms Unbound. The introduction maps the history and structure of the GCWS series and highlights how its rigorous commitment to interdisciplinary graduate education fosters feminist science and technology studies (STS) in the Boston area. The introduction also frames the remarks of the roundtable participants, who speak to drag queens, artificial intelligence, plant life, gender and environmental conservation, and objecthood. Five transcripts or “lab reports” highlight how the figure of the cyborg animates and reinvigorates feminist, queer, and trans approaches to technoscience.
In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, the editorial board curators of this special section ask three... more In the wake of the Ebola outbreak, the editorial board curators of this special section ask three interdisciplinary scholars to reflect on the global pandemic.
One spring morning in 1995, ecologist Jayne Belnap walked into a dry grassland in Canyonlands Nat... more One spring morning in 1995, ecologist Jayne Belnap walked into a dry grassland in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, an area that she has been studying for more than 15 years. "I literally stopped and went, 'Oh my God!' she recalls. The natural grasslandwith needle grass, Indian rice grass, saltbush, and the occasional pinyon-juniper treethat Belnap had seen the year before no longer existed; it had become overgrown with 2-foot-high Eurasian cheatgrass. "I was stunned," says Belnap, "It was like the aliens had landed." (Enserink 1999)
Labor has been and continues to be an indispensable category of analysis for radical scholars, as... more Labor has been and continues to be an indispensable category of analysis for radical scholars, as evidenced by the proliferation of new terms—“affective” labor, “immaterial” labor, “digital” labor, and so forth—developed to describe the asymmetrical relations of capital and labor in and across contemporary settings. This essay traces the recent advent of the concept of “biological” or “clinical” labor, exploring (a) the utility of the concept for radical historians and (b) the utility of perspectives from labor history to the studies of “biocapital” found in recent science and technology studies (STS). Placing labor history and STS in conversation (without presupposing clear or stable boundaries around either field of scholarship), the essay probes the meanings and limitations of the concept of “biological labor” from the vantage points of both fields, drawing in particular on critiques of human exceptionalism generated by scholars in animal studies, critical race studies, indigenou...
Women's Studies: an interdisciplinary journal, 2019
A conversation with Banu Subramanian about doing FSS in the context of the university and the Wom... more A conversation with Banu Subramanian about doing FSS in the context of the university and the Women's and Gender Studies classroom.
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Papers by Banu Subramaniam