Winter 2008 Advance Course Information

This information effective for winter 2008. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

History of Consciousness

[HISC-251A]

251A Readings in Science Studies

Instructor: Donna Haraway
Office: Humanities 420
Hours: Wednesdays, 9-12
Phone: 9-1924
E-mail: haraway@ucsc.edu

Course Description

Emphasizing diverse cultures, histories, and scenes, this seminar will examine the knot tied by science and technology studies, animal studies, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, film, art practice, and literary fiction. The matrix is the weave of biopower, biocapital, bioart, and bioscience within which historically located multi-species relationships take shape. If we take seriously the need for survivable categories not based on “the human” and its constitutive exclusions, what inter- and intra-active worlds might take shape? Note that the term “critter” in this seminar can designate people, technologies, and all sorts of living and dead organisms—all in parts and wholes and in many media.

Required Texts

Three editions of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (1995, 2001, 2007) will be on reserve in McHenry Library to provide a snapshot of knots of scholarly conversation in a dynamic interdisciplinary practice over about 15 years. We will read some essays critical to this seminar from the 3rd edition, edited by Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman:

• Adele E. Clarke and Susan Leigh Star, “The Social Worlds Framework: A Theory/Methods Package,” pp. 113-138
• Lucy Suchman, “Feminist STS and the Sciences of the Artificial,” pp. 139-164
• Warwick Anderson and Vincanne Adams, “Pramoedya's Chickens Postcolonial Studies of Technoscience,” pp. 181-204
• Regula Valérie Burri and Joseph Dumit, “Social Studies of Scientific Imaging and Visualization,” pp. 297-318

Readings

Readings will be drawn from the following:

I. Critters of the Laboratory

• Karen Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 (Princeton University Press, 2004)
• Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton University Press, 2002)
• Sarah Franklin, Dolly Mixtures (Duke University Press, 2007)
• Hannah Landecker, “Living Differently in Time: Plasticity, Temporality, and Cellular Biotechnologies,” Culture Machine 7 (2005) http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j007/Articles/landecker.htm
• Natasha Myers, “Animating Mechanism: Animations and the Propagation of Affect in the Lively Arts of Protein Modeling,” Science Studies, Special Issue on the Future of Feminist Technoscience , 19 (2): 6-30. PDF available from http://web.mit.edu/nmyers/www/
• Natasha Myers, “Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography” is forthcoming in Social Studies of Science .
• Natasha Myers, “Modeling Proteins, Making Scientists: An Ethnography of Visual Cultures and Pedagogy in Structural Biology,” PhD dissertation, MIT, 2007
• Melinda Cooper, "Monstrous Progeny: The Teratological Tradition in Science and Literature," in Frankenstein's Science , edited by Jane Goodall and Christa Knelwolf (Ashgate, 2007).

II. Critters Called Domestic

• Rebecca Cassidy and Molly Mullin, eds., Where the Wild Things Are Now: Domestication Reconsidered (New York: Berg, 2007)
• Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)

III. Critters Making Culture

• Gregory Pfluger and Brett Walker, eds., JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan’s Animal Life (University of Michigan Press,2005)
• Noreen Giffney and Myra Hird, eds., Queering the Non/Human (Ashgate, in press for 2008)
• Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press, 2006)
• E.E. Evans Pritchard, The Nuer (Oxford University Press, 1969)
• Garry Marvin, Bullfight (University of Illinois Press, 1994)
• Eduardo Kohn, “How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Trans-Species Engagement,” American Ethnologist 34, no. 1 (Feb 2007): 3-24

IV. Making Enemies, Making Kin

• Steve Baker, “’You Kill Things to Look at Them’: Animal Death in Contemporary Art,” in Killing Animals , The Animals Studies Group (University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 69-98
• Deborah Bird Rose, “What if the Angel of History Were a Dog?” Cultural Studies Review 12, no 2 (March 2006): 67-78
• John Knight, Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflict in Anthropological Perspective (Routledge, 2001)
• Donna Haraway, “Speculative Fabulations for Technoculture’s Generations: Taking Care of Unexpected Country,” Artium 2007

V. Seeing Critters

• Joanthan Burt, Animals in Film (Reaktion Books, 2002)
• Hannah Landecker, “Cellular Features: Microcinematography and Early Film Theory,” Critical Inquiry 3, no. 4 (2005):903-937. http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/issues/current/31n4landecker.html
• Eva Shawn Hayward, “Refracting The Love Life of the Octopus,” in Octopus: A Journal of Visual Studies , Inaugural Issue, 2005

Fiction:

• Indra Sinha, Animal’s People (Simon and Shuster, 2007)
• Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (Anchor, 2004)
• J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace (Penguin, 1999)
• Marlene Van Niekerk, Triomf , translated by Leon De Kock (Overlook, 2005)
• Linda Hogan, Power (New York: Norton, 1998)
• Romain Gary, White Dog (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
• Ursula LeGuin, “Mazes” and “The Wife’s Tale” from Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences

Film:

• White Dog , directed by Samuel Fuller, with Kristy McNichol, Christa Lang, Paul Winfield, and Burl Ives
• Amores Perros , directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (2000)
• Amours de la pieuvre (1965) ( Love Life of the Octopus ), directed by Jean Painlevé

Art emphasizing critter-human-technology collaborations:

• Patricia Piccinini, http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/
• Beatriz da Costa, especially the PigeonBlog project, http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/
• Phil Ross, http://www.philross.org/
• Biotechnique, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, October 2007-January 2008, curated by Phil Ross, http://biotechnique.blogspot.com/
• Natasha Myers, A Bioluminescent Photo Gallery, Reconfiguring Vision in BioImaging, http://web.mit.edu/nmyers/www/plants.html
• Lynn Randolph, http://www.lynnrandolph.com/02.html

Course syllabi and bibliographies:

Garry Marvin, Animals and Society (great syllabus and extensive bibliography from autumn 2000), http://www2.asanet.org/sectionanimals/Syllabus2.html

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