Book Launch for 'Our Science, Ourselves'

In Our Science, Ourselves: How Gender, Race, and Social Movements Shaped the Study of Science, Kuljian tells the origin story of feminist science studies by focusing on the life histories of six key figures—Ruth Hubbard, Rita Arditti, Evelyn Fox Keller, Evelynn Hammonds, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Banu Subramaniam. These women were part of a trailblazing network of female scientists in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s who were drawn to the Boston area—to Harvard, MIT, and other universities—to study science, to network with other scientists, or to take a job. Inspired by the social and political activism of the women’s movement and organizations such as Science for the People, the Genes and Gender Collective, and the Combahee River Collective, they began to write and teach about women in science, gender and science, and sexist and racist bias and exclusion. They would lead the critiques of E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology in 1975 and Larry Summers’ comments about women in science thirty years later. The book also explores how these contributions differed from those of Nancy Hopkins’, author of the 1999 MIT report on women in science, and a “reluctant feminist.” Drawing on a rich array of sources that combines published journal articles and books with archival materials and interviews with major luminaries of feminist science studies, Kuljian chronicles and celebrates the contributions that these women have made to our collective scientific knowledge and view of the world.

Get your book signed by the author! Copies will be available for purchase from Amherst Books.

This event is sponsored by the UMass History Department and co-sponsored by the departments of Anthropology, Social Thought and Political Economy, and Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies. Read the History Department's Sponsorship Statement. 

Questions about the event? Contact Sigrid Schmalzer at @email

Read more about the book at University of Massachusetts Press.