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Botany of Empire

Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism

By Banu Subramaniam

An accessible foray into botany’s origins and how we can transform its future

Colonial ambitions spawned imperial attitudes, theories, and practices that remain entrenched within botany and across the life sciences. Banu Subramaniam draws on fields...

Queer Data Studies

By Patrick Keilty

Untangles how data shapes and is shaped by queer worlds

Data, perilous and powerful, is both a worldmaking and a dismantling force. The collection of data about queer lives and bodies, the consequences of data analysis...

Hacking the Underground

Disability, Infrastructure, and London's Public Transport System

By Raquel Velho

Reveals how knowledge from the margins shapes infrastructures

"Minding the gap" while using a wheelchair on the London Underground goes beyond a sharp eye and careful foot placement to avoid a fall: it can entail carrying...

Underflows

Queer Trans Ecologies and River Justice

By Cleo Wölfle Hazard

Connects river sciences to queer and trans theory through collaborative restoration work

Rivers host vibrant multispecies communities in their waters and along their banks, and, according to queer-trans-feminist river scientist Cleo Wölfle Hazard, their future vitality...

Bad Dog

Pit Bull Politics and Multispecies Justice

By Harlan Weaver

Challenges the way we think about pit bulls and their human companions

Fifty-plus years of media fearmongering coupled with targeted breed bans have produced what could be called “America’s Most Wanted” dog: the pit bull. However,...

Holy Science

The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

By Banu Subramaniam

Behind the euphoric narrative of India as an emerging world power lies a complex and evolving relationship between science and religion. Evoking the rich mythology of comingled worlds where humans, animals, and gods transform each...

Molecular Feminisms

Biology, Becomings, and Life in the Lab

By Deboleena Roy

“Should feminists clone?” “What do neurons think about?” “How can we learn from bacterial writing?” These and other provocative questions have long preoccupied neuroscientist, molecular biologist, and intrepid feminist theorist Deboleena Roy, who takes seriously...

Gender before Birth

Sex Selection in a Transnational Context

By Rajani Bhatia

In the mid-1990s, the international community pronounced prenatal sex selection via abortion an “act of violence against women” and “unethical.” At the same time, new developments in reproductive technology in the United States led to...

Queer Feminist Science Studies

A Reader

By Cyd Cipolla, Kristina Gupta, David A. Rubin, Angela Willey

Queer Feminist Science Studies takes a transnational, trans-species, and intersectional approach to this cutting-edge area of inquiry between women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and science and technology studies (STS). The essays here “queer”—or denaturalize and...

Reinventing Hoodia

Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa

By Laura A. Foster

Native to the Kalahari Desert, Hoodia gordonii is a succulent plant known by generations of Indigenous San peoples to have a variety of uses: to reduce hunger, increase energy, and ease breastfeeding. In the global...

Risky Bodies & Techno-Intimacy

Reflections on Sexuality, Media, Science, Finance

By Geeta Patel

Risky Bodies and Techno-Intimacy traverses disparate and uncommon routes to explore how people grapple with the radical uncertainties of their lives. In this edgy, evocative journey through myriad interleaved engagements—including the political economies of cinema;...

Figuring the Population Bomb

Gender and Demography in the Mid-Twentieth Century

By Carole R. McCann

Figuring the Population Bomb traces the genealogy of twentieth-century demographic “facts” that created a mathematical panic about a looming population explosion. This narrative was popularized in the 1970s in Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book The Population...