240038 SE Gender Studies Topics and Themes II (2017W)

Feminist and queer inquires into the nature of scientific knowledge production have demonstrated that science is a powerful source of images and imaginations about our world. In doing so, a hegemonial form of scientific knowledge production has been identified as the “god trick” of seeing everything from nowhere. In a similar way, technology has been theorized as “masculine culture” and therefore as always political. “We're inside of what we make, and it's inside of us. We are living in a world of connections – and it matters which ones get made and unmade”, Donna Haraway reminds us.

In this course, we will investigate the complex relationships between science, technology, and gender in historical and contemporary contexts. Reading scientitif and philosophical texts as well as graphic novels and other media, we will discuss key concepts and theoretical approaches of feminist science and technology studies revolving around the question of how feminist scholars have problematized the ways in which difference according to sex, gender, race, dis/ability, and species is embedded into and at the same time also produced by science and technology. Moreover, we will engage with current feminist and queer approaches and ask how they provide different ways of understanding science and technology. Is science only about objective facts and the discovery of truth? And if not, how can we then talk about facts, truth, and objectivity without running the risk of falling into relativism? How do images and imaginations about sex, gender, race, and dis/ability shape science and technology, and how are they, in turn, shaped by science and technology? How are particular bodies and identities - and with them also politics – enacted through science and technology?

Exploring different approaches from feminist, queer, and postcolonial scholars on the question of how technologies shape and simultaneously are shaped by social, economic, political, and other factors, and how values and power relations are embedded into technical systems and technologies, we will learn what science and technology have to do with issues of social justice, equality, and democracy.

Methods
This course will be run as a reading and discussion intensive seminar. Preparation for class discussion by careful reading of the week’s literature is required. Thematic inputs of the instructor in German and English language will be followed and complemented by presentations and group works as well as optional excursions (e.g. to the Technical Museum and to Laboria Cuboniks: Alien Introspection. Xenofeminismus, Robotik und maschinisch-promiskuitive Kreaturen, within the art series “The Future of Demonstration: Vermögen” in November 2017).

Aims:
Through a close reading of the literature, discussions, and group work, students will: get introduced into key theories, concepts, and approaches in feminist science and technology studies; be able to apply a variety of methods of critical thinking and philosophical reflection to key theories and phenomena in science and technology; develop a broad understanding of the multilayered and historical contingent relationship of science, technology, knowledge, power, and gender; discuss different takes on and develop own thoughts about how assumptions about gender as well as gender identities shape and are shaped by science and technology.

A preliminary schedule for the course can be found here: http://josefbarla.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/9/1/109175423/se_themenfelder_ii_-_feministische_wissenschafts-_und_technikforschung_wise2017_18.pdf