CFP: Feminist Engagements with the Democratization of Science

Editors: Clare Jen (Denison University) and Sara Giordano (San Diego State University)

We seek essays, interviews, and creative works that provide feminist engagements with democratic forms of scientific knowledge production. In the last few decades there has been what science studies scholars identify as a democratization of science. We see this democratization in new scientific practices such as open access journals, new forms of public engagement, and the emergence of do-it-yourself scientific cultures. Although science studies scholars have explored various aspects of these new democratic sciences, there has been a noticeable lack of in depth feminist analysis addressing questions of power and justice in this newest incarnation of knowledge production.

Feminists who have engaged with these new democratic sciences have asked questions about the gendered meanings and differences between “kitchen” and “garage” science, the relationship with earlier feminist health movements, and whether and how these new democratic forms of science mark a shift in power and knowledge. Considering the resonances in discourse over access to scientific knowledge with feminist science studies and feminist and other activist health and environmental movements, a feminist engagement with these sciences is needed.

In this spirit, we solicit ruminations on feminist practices in science and analyses about the democratization of science. Possible pieces may highlight how feminist engagements are increasingly occurring in non-traditional spaces—like in community biolabs, behind kitchen walls, beneath maker space tents, at the interstices of women’s and gender studies and biology, around hackerspaces, and in e-artist studios.   

We solicit work that analyzes the broader movement towards more democratic science, analyzes explicitly feminist engagements with science within the DIY movement, and creative work sharing new models.

Possible topics and questions include, but are not limited to:

• Do you have a lab procedure to share or a protocol to build a DIY feminist tool?
• What kind of ethics and politics are developed through new democratic sciences?
• How are feminists and other activists experimenting with more democratic sciences? What histories might we draw on to model our engagements with science?
• How are feminist scientists rewriting research and representation?
• DIY Bio and DIY science
• Feminist health activism
• Activist and community science
• Biohacking
• DIY gynecology
• Kitchen science vs. garage science
• Citizen scientists/science
• Amateur scientists/science, science hobbyists

Submission format and deadline:We are soliciting submissions for a proposed special journal issue. The deadline to submit an abstract (250-500 words) is January 11, 2016. Please send questions and/or a PDF of the abstract, including contact details (name, institutional or organizational affiliation, email, and phone number) to Clare Jen at jenc@denison.edu.

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Sara Giordano, PhD 
Assistant Professor 
Department of Women's Studies 
San Diego State University 
5500 Campanile Drive 
San Diego, CA 92182-6030 
sgiordano@mail.sdsu.edu