Letters-feminist science studies letter

Feminist science studies cover letter--

I am writing to express my interest in the tenure-track position in History of Science and WGS, which was advertised on the STSGRAD website. I was this past June awarded a Ph.D. in Women's Studies from UCLA. My scholarship on gender and race in science and medicine make me a strong candidate for this position.

I seek an academic position that will allow me to continue studying contemporary formations of gender and race in scientific discourses of disease. I approach the study of scientific discourse through an interdisciplinary lens, as constituted by media, culture and other features of social and historical context as much as by practices occurring in the circumscribed realm of science proper. My first research project concerned the intersecting discourses of science and Orientalism represented by the U.S. mass media in its coverage of SARS and China. I demonstrated the ways in which Orientalism shaped U.S. understandings of SARS epidemiology and of Chinese norms of gender and hygiene, and resulted in the notion of a diseased transnational Chinese Other. This work resulted in a publication titled “Chinese chickens, ducks, pigs and humans, and the Technoscientific Discourses of Global U.S. Empire” (enclosed).

In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examined the role of gender and race in discourses of "biosecurity" and practices of disease control in the post-9/11 U.S. The post-9/11 era has been characterized by heightened attention to “national security”, and the spectre of “bioterrorism” has shaped the disease scares that occurred in rapid succession following the September 11 attacks in the U.S. —the anthrax scare immediately after, the smallpox scare in 2002, SARS in 2003 and “bird flu” in 2004. Through a multi-sited analysis of textual sources including mass media, law, science journals, and internet blogs, I examined the ways in which these bioterrorism-inflected disease scares invoked racialized representations of disease threats and gendered measures of "biosecurity".

My research illustrated that, in the backdrop of U.S. imperialist politics, women were discursively deployed as alternately health guardians of the U.S. nation and signifiers of a feminized white society vulnerable to "biological threats" presumed to emanate from transnational Middle Eastern male (bio)terrorists and diseased Asians (intentionality is associated with the former case, un-intentionality with the latter). I demonstrated how these disease representations played a role not only in the enlistment of women as healthcare workers into an emerging biodefense apparatus and the Othering of racialized groups, but also in the instantiation of neoconservative measures of disease control under the rubric of “biosecurity”, such as the militarization of biomedical science and the securitization of public health. Drawing heavily on feminist and postcolonial theory, and cultural studies of science and medicine, this multi-sited cultural history contributes to an understanding of racialized geographies of disease and gendered economies of healthcare during the post-9/11 period in the U.S. This research was funded by the UCLA Institute of American Cultures.

For my next research project, I am interested in focusing primarily on the domain of science in order to examine the embeddedness of cultural norms in scientific knowledge production. More specifically, I wish to study how assumptions about gender and race constitute the very scientific theories and models upon which the research and development of “bioterrorism” countermeasures are based. I will utilize primary scientific literature and popular media coverage of the scientific research and technology production, engaging in textual analysis of the language, methods, and stated purposes of the countermeasures for achieving “biosecurity”.

I am particularly excited about the prospect of teaching students in women, gender and sexuality studies as well as history of science. I have teaching interests as well as experience in both introductory and upper-level Women's Studies courses that emphasize feminist activism, intersectionality, and global contexts. I have taught “Introduction to Women’s Studies” three times at a two-year college and worked as a teaching assistant for two years at UCLA. In spring 2007, I designed and taught a course to rave reviews titled “Feminist Studies of Science and Technology” which focused on gender, race, sexuality, class and imperialism in relation to science and technology (enclosed).

In addition to a desire to continue teaching science studies and introductory women’s studies courses, I am interested in teaching courses on the history of race and disease, empire and medicine, women's health, feminist cultural theories and methods, transnational feminisms, women in transnational perspective, and the history of U.S. women of color. I am passionate about teaching and am dedicated to empowering creative, socially-aware, and independent thinkers. In a nurturing classroom environment, I encourage students to undertake the learning process through the lens of their own experiences and as critically engaged participants. I attempt to demystify knowledge production and authority figures by encouraging students to view themselves as capable of contributing and asserting knowledge rather than as passive learners. My pedagogical strategies consist of a participatory instruction style, diverse course content, and situated knowledge practices.

My skills and experience in curriculum development, administrative departmental committee service, as well as my community service are also attributes I would contribute to the department. As a member of the UCLA Women’s Studies graduate curriculum committee, I spearheaded a revamping of the required two-course graduate series on feminist theory in order to move away from Eurocentric paradigms towards a more intersectional, globally-contextualized framework. I also served as graduate representative on the UCLA Women’s Studies faculty advisory committee, as a student member of the UC Migrating Epistemologies Working Group, and co-founded the student group “Women in the World”, which put on plays and other cultural programs to reach a wider UCLA audience. I welcome this wonderful opportunity to continue working in my field of specialization and contribute to the department of history of science and program in women, gender and sexuality. The interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research environment would be ideal to nurture and support my scholarly development.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Letters-Biosecurity Postdoc Project

Technologies of National Security, the Discourse of Bioterrorism, and the Science of Biosecurity

The proposed project examines how cultural understandings of "terrorism" and "bioterrorism"—and their gendered and racialized assumptions—shape scientific knowledge production. After 9/11, the U.S. government refocused “national security” policies with new fervor into an official “global war on terror”, institutionalizing mechanisms of surveillance and security throughout society. While scholars, policy-makers and activists have analyzed the myriad forms these have taken, little attention has been paid to the ways the post-9/11 national security apparatus expanded into the realm of biology. Scientific research and laboratory practices of "biosecurity" have emerged, with important implications for researchers, test subjects as well as the general public.

Biosecurity entails two main prongs—the safeguarding of access to biology laboratories from "bioterrorists", and the research and development of biotechnological “countermeasures” against “bioterrorism diseases"—diseases like anthrax and smallpox, which have been defined as potential bioterrorist weapons. This scientific production of biotechnologies for “national security” is highly dangerous, involving work with pathogenic organisms (such as anthrax and smallpox) in order to produce countermeasures to them. Biological research already entails certain dangers since the organisms being cultivated are often hazardous to human health and have the potential to harm both the scientists directly working with them and the public at large if they are leaked outside of the laboratory. Work with "bioterrorism diseases", then, is an even more high-stakes endeavor; for the researchers being exposed to these pathogens and the test subjects who will undergo clinical trials with the resulting biotechnological countermeasures, this is especially the case.

The proposed project elaborates upon a central theme in my dissertation: the cultural assumptions of post-9/11 discourse on bioterrorism—the construction of "bioterrorists" as reified violent "Middle Eastern" males and the construction of bioterrorism victims as "women and children". It remains imperative to interrogate how these gendered and racialized assumptions about bioterrorism underlie the concomitant measures of biosecurity instituted. Utilizing textual analysis methodologies, I will examine the primary scientific literature for 1) the extent to which laboratory guidelines for conducting biological research (especially those involving hazardous pathogens) are constructed with the notion of danger as originating from outside the laboratory—epitomized by the Middle Eastern bioterrorist—rather than as inherent in the research itself and 2) the extent to which bioterrorism countermeasures are actually designed (via clinical drug trial testing) for the populations purported to need them the most—i.e., women and children.

My primary theoretical framework will be that of feminist science studies—which as a field has demonstrated how science, rather than being an apolitical practice separate from and unaffected by the larger culture of which it is a part, is in fact shaped by social values that become embedded in scientific research and its technological products (Haraway 1991; Lederman 2001; Mayberry et al. 2001; MacCormack and Strathern 1980; Bleier 2001; Hubbard 2001). I aim for my research to intervene in mainstream bioethics debates, which have remained for the most part focused on the effects biosecurity has had on ideals of open scientific exchange and the unfettered pursuit of scientific knowledge. My research will also be in conversation with the scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that, while historicizing the emergence of biosecurity, has failed to adequately address gender, race, and other social identity categories salient in shaping its development. Thus, in addition to addressing what is an understudied topic in feminist science studies, my project will contribute to the bioethics literature and the burgeoning humanistic and social scientific literature on biosecurity.

I will analyze the language, methods, and stated purposes of bioterrorism countermeasures research and development, such as the genetic engineering research on pathogens like the smallpox virus, or the development and testing of antibiotics like Cipro for anthrax. I will track researchers of bioterrorism countermeasures through their articulations in news media about the role of these countermeasures in achieving “biosecurity”, as well as any stated or unstated assumptions about the utility of the research being done and who will actually benefit from this research. Secondly, I will collect materials published by key players brokering laboratory guidelines for biosecurity (i.e., scientific advisory boards, biology journal editors and bioethics panels). I will analyze stated rationales for proposed regulations restricting access to laboratory research and scientific data, and any related cultural assumptions about the normative "bioterrorist" (i.e., "Middle Eastern" men) or their intended victims (i.e., "women and children").

I not only bring to this project scholarly expertise in the field of feminist science studies and experience conducting textual analysis honed in my dissertation project, but also a familiarity with science texts garnered from my work experience in biology laboratories and undergraduate training. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in Neurobiology, I worked for four years in neurobiology and genetics laboratories. In addition to my dissertation work on the post-9/11 cultural productions of gender and race in popular scientific discourse pertaining to post-9/11 “biosecurity”, I have contributed to the field of feminist science studies and increasing access to science by women and people of color through designing and piloting a course titled “Feminist Studies of Science and Technology” and working as a researcher in a Caltech study of the institutional mechanisms causing young girls to lose interest in science.

To summarize, I have the knowledge, experience and commitment to effectively conduct this feminist analysis of biosecurity—an exploration of how post-9/11 cultural norms shape scientific practice and in turn how scientists, test subjects, and the general public are affected.

Feminist cultural studies letter

Feminist cultural studies cover letter

Dear Hiring Committee:

I am writing to express my interest in the tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in Gender, Sexuality and Popular Culture. I was this past June awarded a Ph.D. in Women's Studies from UCLA. As an interdisciplinary scholar whose teaching and research bridges feminist cultural studies and cultural studies of science and medicine, I am a strong candidate for this position.

I seek an academic position that will allow me to continue studying contemporary formations of gender, race and sexuality in relation to popular understandings of disease. My first research project in this area concerned the intersecting discourses of science and Orientalism represented by the U.S. mass media in its coverage of SARS and China. I demonstrated the ways in which U.S.-based perceptions of SARS contagion in China were shaped by Eurocentric views of hygiene, gender norms, public-private dichotomy, and human non-human animal hierarchy. This work resulted in a publication titled “Chinese chickens, ducks, pigs and humans, and the Technoscientific Discourses of Global U.S. Empire”.

In my dissertation, titled “The Bio Scare: anthrax, smallpox, SARS, flu and post-9/11 U.S. Empire”, I examined intersecting tropes of gender, race and sexuality in the media-driven disease scares that followed the September 11 attacks in the U.S.—the anthrax scare immediately after, the smallpox scare in 2002, SARS in 2003 and “bird flu” in 2004. These disease scares were part of a post-9/11 era characterized by heightened attention to “national security”. Shaped by the spectre of “bioterrorism”, they centered on "biological threats"—infectious diseases and potential biological warfare agents such as anthrax, smallpox, SARS and flu—and invoked racist representations of disease threats and sexist tropes of disease control. My project examined these cultural constructions of disease—and the disease control measures they helped engender—through a multi-sited cultural ethnography of textual sources spanning popular and specialized realms including mass media, law, medical journals, and internet blogs.

My research illustrated that, in the backdrop of U.S. imperialist politics, women were deployed as alternately health guardians of the U.S. nation and signifiers of a feminized white society vulnerable to "biological threats" presumed to emanate from queer embodiments of transnational danger—the "Middle Eastern" male (bio)terrorist intentionally spreading disease and "Asian" Other unhygienically harboring disease. I demonstrated the role that these disease representations played in both the stigmatization of racialized groups and the enlistment of women as healthcare workers into an emerging biodefense apparatus. Furthermore, I showed that these tropes helped justify the instantiation of neoconservative measures of disease control under the rubric of “biosecurity” (e.g., the diversion of scarce public health resources to biodefense). Drawing heavily on feminist, postcolonial and queer theory, and cultural studies of science and medicine, this multi-sited cultural history contributes to an understanding of racialized and sexualized geographies of disease and gendered economies of healthcare during the post-9/11 period in the U.S. This research was funded by the UCLA Institute of American Cultures. Thus far, two book chapters and an op-ed have resulted, and I am currently writing an article on the anthrax scare and masculinity to be submitted for academic journal publication as well as an issue brief on the securitization of healthcare aimed at health policy and racial and gender justice community organizations.

For my next research project, I am interested in continuing my study of contemporary constructions of disease discourse in the context of crisis preparation. I will focus on pandemic flu preparedness under the new Obama Administration, which has for the most part been an extension of disaster preparedness planning under the post-9/11 Bush Administration. I will examine how popular representations of communities of color as the imagined panicking and noncompliant masses threatening public safety during a pandemic crisis are informed by a history of eugenics control of these same populations. I will focus specifically on how women of color, seen as primary caretakers for their respective communities, are depicted as failing in their maternal roles and deemed responsible for breeding an overpopulated, belligerent and diseased ethnic community who threaten the health of mainstream populations.

I am particularly excited about the prospect of teaching gender and women's studies courses to a diverse ethnic and working-class student body in Chicago. I am passionate about teaching and am dedicated to empowering creative, socially-aware, and independent thinkers. I have teaching interests as well as experience in both introductory and upper-level Women's Studies courses that emphasize feminist activism, intersectionality, and global contexts. I have taught “Introduction to Women’s Studies” three times at a two-year college and four times as a teaching assistant at UCLA. In spring 2007, I designed and taught a course to rave reviews titled “Feminist Studies of Science and Technology” which focused on gender, race and sexuality in relation to science and technology. In addition to a desire to continue teaching introductory women’s studies and feminist science studies courses, I am interested in teaching feminist cultural theories and methods; gender and popular culture; global perspectives on women and gender; transnational feminisms; women of color history; queer women of color in the U.S.; race, gender and sexuality; race and disease geographies; and gender, sexuality and medicine.

My pedagogical strategies consist of a participatory instruction style, dialoguing across difference, and situating knowledge practices. I view teaching as a tool of social transformation. In a nurturing classroom environment, I encourage students to undertake the learning process through the lens of their own experiences and as critically engaged participants. I strive to honor the experience of as many students as possible by offering multiple modes of participation (and grade contribution)—in-class discussion, film and internet presentations, small group work, short paper assignments and extra credits, out-of-class communication, in-class time-constrained exams, take-home written papers, art and multimedia projects, as well as service-learning internships. I also attempt to demystify knowledge production and authority figures by encouraging students to view themselves as capable of contributing and asserting knowledge rather than as passive learners.

My skills and experience in curriculum development, administrative departmental committee service, and community work are also attributes I would contribute to your department. As a member of the UCLA Women’s Studies graduate curriculum committee, I spearheaded a revamping of the required two-course graduate series on feminist theory in order to move away from Eurocentric paradigms towards a more intersectional and globally-contextualized framework. I also served as graduate representative on the UCLA Women’s Studies faculty advisory committee, as a student member of the UC Migrating Epistemologies Working Group, and co-founded the student group “Women in the World” which put on plays and other cultural programs challenging stereotypes about Arab and Muslim women. Moreover, since 2000 I have been involved in community activism to promote social justice for women who have survived sexual assault, immigrant Chinese women exploited in the garment industry, and formerly incarcerated women. I also have experience working with diverse youth in anti-oppression trainings and teaching self-defense to diverse women and trans folk.

I am excited to be potentially joining your department. I believe that the Gender and Women's Studies Department at UIC and its mission of engaged scholarship would be an ideal environment to nurture my research interests—motivated by contemporary phenomenon shaping the lives of women and communities of color, my written work—aimed at both academic and less specialized audiences, and my pedagogical development—centered on student-generated knowledge production.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.