HC 421H, Honors College colloquium: Women Write Science
Summary of first week's readings
From Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg, "A Manifesto for the Humanities
in a Technological Age," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Feb
13, 2004
--humanities analyze representation, and investigate "conditions of expression,
signification, and power" (later in the essay, humanistic training is characterized
as "taxonomical, philosophical, indexical")
The triad on which analysis in the humanities is based: meaning, value, significance
Skills the humanities teach: insight, analysis, logic, speculation, historical knowledge, linguistic mastery, geographical precision, aesthetic production, complex religious understanding
The "manifesto":
History matters
Relationality reveals
Conscience and critical memory trouble
Creativity counts
Social policy contains social assumptions and values
Communication clarifies
Diversity is important
Linguistic diversity is essential to real heterogeneity
(Parallel this list with Fox Keller (2001) on what needs to be integrated with science: "Multiple social and political forces, psychological predispositions, experimental constraints, and cognitive demands," p. 141)
Evelyn Fox Keller readingsissues
science discursively defined by reason and experiment, "objectivity," "neutrality," but these ideas themselves discursive
conceptual and linguistic work does not occur in a vacuum
the allied axes:
science as compelling
Second articleMcClintock: "if you'd only just let the material tell you"; exceptions have meaning; a different goal for science: understanding rather than prediction, affirming connections; pluralistic
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