Strategic Working Groups
Regeneration: Life Sciences and the Humanities || Spring 2007
The Mellon Strategic Group in Spring 2007 was engaged in topics at the intersection of the Life Sciences and the Humanities, demonstrating the depth of humanities and social science faculty members who are not only interested, but are uniquely qualified to work together in this area based on their expertise in the subject matter.
The group looked at historical, anthropological, and humanistic approaches to such arenas as bio-security, biomedicine, AIDS, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, synthetic biology, bio-energy, and reproductive technologies. Charis Thompson, one of the co-convenors of the project, reported that “beyond these focal points, some of the issues upon which the group is focusing include new and old intersections between race and genetics; the life sciences in film and literature; feminist and philosophical discourses on life and life politics; the role of bioethics as a form of research governance in the U.S. and transnationally; intellectual property and other languages and mechanisms of ownership, access, and circulation; changing definitions of sciences’ “publics” in new and shifting relationships among the military, the academy, and industry; and global aspects of science, technology, and medicine in both historical and contemporary frames.”
The collective conversations and individual contributions have proven rewarding, and always surprising and energizing. Paul Rabinow (Anthropology) commented of the group that “it is more than fortuitous timing, given what is going on with the BP deal. We have the chance to reflect and intervene in a timely fashion thanks to very rich trans-disciplinary exchange.” Donna Jones (English) added that “this has been a good opportunity to engage with the pressing technical and scientific information of the day as a humanist; this is central.” Jack Lesch (History) described the group as “an excellent opportunity for historical perspectives on bioscience and biotechnology to enter a dialogue with perspectives from other fields.”
The goals of the Life Sciences and the Humanities group are consistent with the mission of public universities—to promote broad-based and free intellectual inquiry in teaching and research. Within this mission, the values, epistemologies, and roles of science and technology must be productively and critically engaged. The group hopes to contribute to these goals through, for example, a research and teaching proposal on Alternative Energies in a Globalizing World, the focus of which was prompted by the announcement of the UC Berkeley/British Petroleum (BP) Biofuels initiative in February 2007.
Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty have all had a chance to address topics at the intersection of the Life Sciences and the Humanities. Click here to read about the G.R.O.U.P. Team on the Stem Cell Initiative, which met in Spring 2006.
About the Group Members
The Mellon Strategic Group on the Life Sciences and the Humanities members were: co-convenors Charis Thompson (Rhetoric/Gender and Women’s Studies) and Cori Hayden (Anthropology); members Paul Rabinow (Anthropology), Donna Jones (English), Anne Nesbet (Film Studies/Slavic Languages and Literatures), Jack Lesch (History) and Abena Osseo-Asare (History); and auditing members Judith Butler (Rhetoric/Comparative Literature) and David Winickoff (Environmental Science, Policy, and Management).
Charis Thompson is Co-Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Center, and Project Director of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Stem Cell Research. Her research areas include science and technology studies, reproductive and genetic technologies, and transnational comparative studies of reproduction biodiversity and environment. Her most recent book Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technology, was published by MIT Press in 2005.
Cori Hayden works on the anthropology of the biosciences in Latin America, the U.S. and the U.K. Her research interests include kinship theory, anthropological work on intellectual property and pharmaceutical politics, and reconfigurations of distribution and redistribution through biomedicine. She is the author of When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2003), and is currently working on a project addressing generic drugs, public domain activism, and pharmaceutical nationalism in Latin America.
Strategic Working Groups
Critical Theory
Humanities and Human Rights
New Media
Redress
Regeneration (Life Sciences)
Religion, Secularism, and Modernity
When is Art Research