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Past Events: Academic Year 2010 - 2011

December 7th

Dr. Omar Dewachi, a medical anthropologist, public health specialist and MD from Iraq presents:

"Of Hakims and Hakems: Medicine and the Biopolitical imaginaries of Mandatory Iraq" (Part Two of the ongoing series Who Counts?: Science, Demography and the Social Series)

5pm

Smith Buonanno 106

 

November 18th

Dr. Wendy Roth of the University of British Columbia presents:

"Not Everybody Knows that I'm Actually Black: The Effects of DNA Ancestry Testing on Racial and Ethnic Boundaries," Part of the Brown Bag Series.

12pm


3rd Floor, Science Library

Wendy Roth is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology University of British Columbia. Her research is on Race and Ethnicity, Immigration, Latino/a Studies, Genetics and Society, Multiracial Identities and Populations, Racial Classification, Inequality, Social Stratification, Urban Poverty, Research Methods. The interest that motivates much of her current research is how social processes like immigration, intermarriage, or interpretations of new technologies challenge racial boundaries and transform classification systems. Her focus in this area is usually tied to its implications for stratification and race relations.

You can find a detailed biography on her website:

http://www.soci.ubc.ca/index.php?id=11218

 

November 16th

Science and Technology Studies Workshop

Dr, Phil Brown presents....

"Advocacy Involvement in Biomonitoring and Household Exposure Studies" 

12pm

3rd Floor Science Library

A light lunch will be provided.

October 21st

Dr. Alondra Nelson of Columbia University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender presents:

"Scientists, Publics and the Politics of Knowledge," Part of the Race and Genomics Lecture Series 2010-11

With Interdisciplinary Panel:
COREY WALKER Africana Studies, Committee on STS
LUNDY BRAUN Africana Studies, Committee on STS
CATHERINE BLISS Africana Studies, Committee on STS
GERI AUGUSTO Public Policy, Committee on STS

4pm

The Cogut Center, PH305

Alondra Nelson is Associate Professor of Sociology and holds an appointment in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWaG). Her areas of specialization include race and ethnicity in the U.S.; gender and kinship; socio-historical studies of medicine, science and technology; and social and cultural theory. Nelson studies the production of knowledge about human difference in biomedicine and technoscience and the circulation of these ideas in the public sphere.

You can find a detailed biography on her website:

http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/fac-bios/nelson/faculty.html

 

October 5th

Science and Technology Studies Workshop with Aiko Takeuchi and Alissa Cordner, Brown University

Alissa Cordner presents…

“Boundary-Work and Uncertainty in Flame Retardant Research, Activism, and Policy."

Aiko Takeuchi presents....

"The Genetics of Consanguinity: Redefining Race and National Identity in an Atomic Age."

12pm

3rd Floor Science Library

A light lunch will be provided.

September 16th

Dr. Edmund Ramsden of the University of Exeter History Department presents:

"Challenging the stigma of eugenics: Population surveys and the genetic demography of mental ability." Part of the ongoing 'Who Counts?: Science, Demography and the Social Series'

Edmund Ramsden is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter, working on a Welcome Trust funded project on the history of stress. His research interests are in the history and sociology of the social and biological sciences and their relations, with a particular focus on the behavioral and population sciences. He is currently completing a book on the history of eugenics, population control and the population sciences, and writing a book on crowding, stress and the built environment in the twentieth century United States.

Sponsored by:
Science and Technology Studies, Population Studies and Training Center, History Department and the University of Exeter

September 23rd

Dr. Troy Duster of New York University's Institute for the History of the Production of Knolwedge presents:

"Buried Alive: The Concept of Race in the Biological Sciences and Clinical Medicine -- With some Social and Political
Consequences of its Surprising, even Vigorous Revitalization."

Part of the Race and Genomics Lecture Series 2010-11

Troy Duster is a sociologist with research interests in the sociology of science, public policy, race and ethnicity and deviance. He is a Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and professor of sociology and director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at New York University. He contributed to White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-blind Society.

You can find a detailed biography at:

http://www.asanet.org/footnotes/septoct04/indexone.html

Past Events: Academic Year 2009 - 2010

The New England Premiere of the Film: Butte, America

With film makers Pamela Roberts and Edwin Dobbs

Sept. 23, 2009

Part of the special series 'Nature and Legacy: Humanists, Scientists and the Environment'

A Sense of Wonder

Written and performed by Drama Desk Award Nominee
Kaiulani Lee

Nov. 4, 2009

A one-woman show about Rachel Carson, “the patron saint of the environmental movement,” A Sense of Wonder has been touring the United States for over ten years. The play has been the centerpiece of regional and national conferences on conservation, education, journalism, and the environment. Kaiulani Lee has performed it at over one hundred universities as well as at the Smithsonian Institute, the United Nations, the Sierra Club's Centennial in San Francisco, and the Department of the Interior's 150th anniversary celebration.

Sponsored by:

Bio Med Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Campus Life, The Center for Environmental Studies, Dean of the College, Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, The Pembroke Center, The Provost's Office, Religious Studies, the Committee on Science and Technology Studies, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies

Climate Change

A panel event, Nov. 5, 2009

"Architecture after the Well-Tempered Environment"
Elijah Huge, Wesleyan University

"International Climate Justice: Unequal Risks, Unequal Coping Resources"
Timmons Roberts, Brown University

"Climate Change: Science, (Un)Certainty and Denial"
Hugh Ducklow, The Ecoysystems Center, MBL, Woods Hole

Part of the special series 'Nature and Legacy: Humanists, Scientists and the Environment'

"Making the Truth Truthful: Turning Science into Storytelling"
David Shenk '88
November 11, 2009

David Shenk '88 is the author of five books, including The Immortal Game, The Forgetting, and Data Smog. Currently a correspondent for The Atlantic.com, he has advised the President's Council on Bioethics.

Part of the Great Brown Nonfiction Writers Lecture Series Organized by Brown University Department of English

"There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama:
The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism"

Jennifer Hochschild, Harvard University
Professor of African American Studies
Nov. 17, 4:00pm

Part of the special series: Who Counts?: Science, Demography and the Social

Africa, Europe, and the Birds Between Them

Nancy Jacobs
Associate Professor of History, Brown University

Feb. 9, 2010

Click here for more information on the David Winton Bell Gallery series

Science & Technology Studies Workshop #1

Bio/Cogno-Pasts > NanoFutures: Society and the Converging Sciences in the Global South

Geri Augusto
Adjunct Assistant Professor in Public Policy
Center for Public Policy & American Institutions

Feb. 24, 2010, The Science Center

Blue Vinyl – Film Screening

Blue Vinyl is what filmmaker Judy Helfand calls a "toxic comedy." It is a humorous but sobering tale of how polyvinyl chloride, or vinyl, affects our lives and environment.

March 9, 2010, Smith-Buonanno 106

Toxicity Panel Event

March 18, 2010

The speakers on this panel addressed the problem of environmental toxicity from the standpoints of a scientist involved in a superfund clean-up project and who uses a model system in the laboratory to study the effects of multiple toxicant exposure, a sociologist who works with scientists and community activists to improve communication about the potential dangers of chemicals in the environment, and a film maker who uses her art to engage the public with the problems of toxicity. Click here for speaker bios and abstracts.

Participants:

Judy Helfand, Filmmaker/Organizer, Blue Vinyl

Kim Boekelheide, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Brown University School of Medicine

Phil Brown, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies

Science & Technology Studies Workshop #2

Deborah Weinstein

Visiting lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies

March 24, 2010, The Science Center

Professor Weinstein is an historian of Science who teaches two courses of interest to STS students. Her work is on the history of the human sciences.

Brown Degree Days

Science & Society: Life After Brown

April 7, 2010

Discussion with Deborah Weinstein, Visiting Lecturer in Gender Studies at Brown, and Elizabeth Schibuk, an instructor with Blackstone Academy in RI, about how their studies of science and society informed their lives and career paths after Brown.

Science & Technology Studies Workshop #3

"Race, Ancestry, and the Biomedicalization of Behavior"

Catherine Bliss
Cogut Fellow for STS and Africana Studies

April 22, 2010

Catherine Bliss (PhD New School for Social Research) is a recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities in Africana Studies and the Committee on Science and Technology Studies, 2009-2011. Her research examines the relationship between the construction and naturalization of racial and ethnic categories and modern scientific knowledge production, with a focus on the fields of biology and medicine.

She has taught courses on racial biomedicine and biomedicalization, has conducted research on how genomic scientists think with and about race, and is currently interested in the move from the language of race to ancestry in bioscience. She is particularly interested in how behavior genomics will develop within a 'biogeographical' or nonracial framework.

Nature and Legacy

April 22, 2010

In the final installment of our year-long series "Nature and Legacy" we explore timely issues on a sustainable future with leading policy maker Terry Tamminen:

“Schwarzenegger, Silver Buckshot, and the Outback — the Keys to a Sustainable Future”

Terry Tamminen
Operating Advisor Pegasus Capital Advisors & former Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency of California

Part of Brown’s Nature & Legacy: Humanists, Scientists and the Environment series

Presented by:
The Cogut Center for the Humanities