230159 SE Microscopic romances, female skeletons and immortal cells (2011S)

In contemporary western societies, science is a key source of images and imaginations about the world: What we consider real and possible is shaped by the knowledge science provides. However, as studies from the area of social studies of science and technology have shown, this knowledge is formed in complex social process: rather than just revealing facts about the "world out there", scientists create knowledge in process that involve and draw on the social worlds they live in and its norms and conventions.
Gender is one of the societal categories that highly influences scientific knowledge production. For more than 3 decades, feminist science studies have engaged with unravelling gender bias in scientific knowledge production - and beyond that, bias operating along other dichotomies such as black/white, human/non-human, technical/social. Drawing on authors such as Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and others, this course offers an introduction to topics, approaches and methods of feminist science studies. The aim of the course is to offer space for in-depth engagement with key theorists in the feminist sciences studies and hence provide participants with a tool box to challenge universal scientific claims to truth by relocating scientific knowledge production within the realm of the social practices.