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Cursus: UCINTGEN11
UCINTGEN11
Gender, Science and Technology
Cursus informatie
CursuscodeUCINTGEN11
Studiepunten (EC)7,5
Cursusdoelen
After completing the course, students are able to
  • analyze  questions of gender, science and technology on the level of individual scientists’ careers, scholarly institutions, and the content of science and technology.
  • demonstrate their understanding of specific scientific discoveries by using a life history approach to women scientists’careers.
  • explain the  societal implications and relevance of scientific discoveries in the contexts of gender, science and technology;
  • distinguish  different approaches to gender, science and technology relating to issues of  emancipation (including women to the institution / the curriculum), difference (developing a specifically feminist science and technology), diversity (deconstructing femininity and masculinity), and intersectionality (analyzing gender, ‘race’/ethnicity, class, generation, etc. as co-constituting each other);
  • develop and complete an individual research project in the field of gender, science and technology;
  • position the  understanding of  scientific discoveries and the role of women’s career and their implications for humanities, science and society.
Inhoud
The key theme of this course is to explore how the production of gender and the production of science and technology have been mutually defining. The question of scientific objectivity and neutrality, nature versus nurture, will be addressed by putting the history and development of science and technology in relation to gender questions and feminist epistemology. By studying cases from biology, neuroscience, medical science, quantum physics, as well as feminist approaches to the discipline of science and technology studies, students learn to analyze how gender has been central to scientific endeavors – not only through the exclusion of women, but in the ways that masculinity has been shaped and performed through its practice. Students will further study how this has affected the built environment and sustainability, the ethics and gendering of laboratory research practices, question of the human and its current post-human status.

We pose such questions as: How is gender embedded in the institutions of a complex technological society? How does social and cultural change occur and toward what should we aim? If there are in-born differences between the sexes, should we use technology as a way of enabling or overcoming these differences? Are there feminist technologies? What was the topic of research of prominent scientists? For what kind of technological advance did their pioneering research allow? (I.e.; how are we to understanding their contribution and, as an additional consideration, in what context was it received?)

We raise issues such as cyborgs, the gender of engineers and reproductive technology, as well as questioning if women and feminism have changed science. Furthermore, the course will explore how gender issues have been an integral part of the organization and institutionalization of the natural sciences and engineering thus influencing women’s and men’s lives and careers. The course will also address how the relation between gender, technology and science impact upon social constructions and the dynamics of institutions.


 

Format
There will be 3 sessions of 4 hours each week. In the first session students will have plenary lectures from guest scientists operating in the various fields (physics, biology, chemistry, astrophysics). These will include senior scientists working in the Dutch universities but also in Germany, as well as younger scholars and UCU alumni. The second sessions will consists of in-depth reading and analysis of the theoretical sources. The third session will be devoted to working in groups and the development of individual projects. Students will also make a tour of the University Museum and Academic Building Senate Hall, where they will be introduced to the Catalogus Professorum 1636-now.
 
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