Avenali Lectures

Donna Haraway, Avenali Chair in the Humanities 2003-2004

“From Cyborgs to Companion Species: Dogs,
People, and Technoculture” || September 16, 2003

Webcast || In terms of research, writing, and teaching, Donna Haraway is one of the most important practitioners in a field broadly defined as science studies. Having completed an undergraduate degree at Colorado College with a major in Zoology and minors in Philosophy and English, she went on to complete her Ph.D. at Yale University in Biology (but with an “interdisciplinary arrangement” with the departments of Biology, Philosophy, and History of Science and Medicine). She began her teaching career at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, moved to Johns Hopkins University, and joined the History of Consciousness Board at UC Santa Cruz in 1984. Once again defying traditionally defined departmental categorization, however, Professor Haraway holds associate memberships in Anthropology, Environmental Studies, and Women’s Studies.

Haraway is a leading theorist of the relationships between people and machines, her work having incited debate in fields as varied as primatology, philosophy, and developmental biology. A cyborg, she explained in her book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1991), is a “hybrid of machine and organism.” It is a “fusion of the organic and the technical forged in particular, historical, cultural practices.” “The Cyborg Manifesto,” first published in 1985, is now taught in undergraduate classes at countless universities and has been reprinted or translated in numerous anthologies in North America, Japan, and Europe. In addition to a long list of essays, Haraway is also the author of Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in 20th Century Developmental Biology (1976), Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989), and most recently, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003).

Other Events with Donna Haraway

“The Shiver of Affection: Animating Post-Human Genetics" || September 18, 2003