This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

 

Readings

WEEK # TOPICS READINGS
1 Life now "Meanings of 'Life'." Editorial, Nature 447 (2007): 1031-1032.
2 What is life?

Buy at Amazon Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Synthetic Biology and the Origin of Living Form." In Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 15-49. ISBN: 9780674012509.

Buy at Amazon Kay, Lily. "In the Beginning Was the Word? The Genetic Code and the Book of Life." In The Science Studies Reader. Edited by Mario Biagioli. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999, pp. 224-233. ISBN: 9780415918671.

Buy at Amazon Keller, Evelyn Fox. "Molecules, Messages, and Memory: Life and the Second Law." In Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 43-78. ISBN: 9780231102056.

Buy at Amazon Schrödinger, Erwin. What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780521427081 — SKIM.

Buy at Amazon Bedau, Mark. "The Nature of Life." In The Philosophy of Artificial Life. Edited by Margaret Boden. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 332-357. ISBN: 9780198751557.

Buy at Amazon Margulis, Lynn, and Dorion Sagan. "Life: The Eternal Enigma." In What Is Life? Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000, pp. 1-32. ISBN: 9780520220218.

3 Evolutionary narratives

Buy at Amazon Beer, Gillian. "Preface to the Second Edition," and "Introduction." In Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. New York. NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. xvii-xxxiii and 1-21. ISBN: 9780521767699.

Buy at Amazon Hodge, M. J. S. "Natural Selection: Historical Perspectives." In Keywords in Evolutionary Biology. Edited by Evelyn Fox Keller, and Elizabeth A. Lloyd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 212-219. ISBN: 9780674503137.

Buy at Amazon Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981, pp. 214-236, 240-250, 316-329, and 381-384. ISBN: 9780691023694. — SKIM.

Fedigan, Linda Marie. "The Changing Role of Women in Models of Human Evolution." Annual Review of Anthropology 15 (1986): 25-66, read only 27-29.

Buy at Amazon Nelkin, Dorothy. "The Powers of the Gene," and "Creating Natural Distinctions." In The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman, 1996, pp. 1-18 and 102-126. ISBN: 9780716730491.

Buy at Amazon Lewontin, Richard. "A Story in Textbooks." In Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1993, pp. 87-104. ISBN: 9780060975197.

Buy at Amazon Marks, Jonathan. "98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil: The Human Genome in Evolutionary and Cultural Context." In Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide. Edited by Alan Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 132-152. ISBN: 9780520237933.

4 Biopolitics

Buy at Amazon Foucault, Michel. "Right of Death and Power over Life." In The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1990, pp. 135-159. ISBN: 9780679724698.

Buy at Amazon Rabinow, Paul. "Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality." In Zone 6: Incorporations. Edited by Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter. New York, NY: Zone, 1992, pp. 234-252. ISBN: 9780942299298.

Buy at Amazon Taussig, Karen-Sue, Rayna Rapp, and Deborah Heath. "Flexible Eugenics: Technologies of Self in the Age of Eugenics." In Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide. Edited by Alan Goodman, Deborah Heath, and M. Susan Lindee. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 58-76. ISBN: 9780520237933.

Petryna, Adriana. "Biological Citizenship: The Science and Politics of Chernobyl-Exposed Populations." Osiris 19 (2004): 250-265.

Buy at Amazon Martin, Emily, and Richard Cone. "Corporeal Flows: The Immune System, Global Economies of Food, and New Implications for Health." In Social and Cultural Lives of Immune Systems. Edited by James Wilce Jr. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003, pp. 232-266. ISBN: 9780415310055.

Buy at Amazon Nguyen, Vinh-kim. "Antiretroviral Globalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic Citizenship." In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 124-143. ISBN: 9781405123587.

5 Biology for sale

Buy at Amazon Ritvo, Harriet. "Possessing Mother Nature: Genetic Capital in Eighteenth-Century Britain." In Early Modern Conceptions of Property. Edited by J. Brewer and S. Staves. New York, NY: Routledge, 1996, pp. 413-426. ISBN: 9780415153140.

Landecker, Hannah. "Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science." Science in Context 12 (1999): 203-25.

Waldby, Catherine. "Stem Cells, Tissue Cultures and the Production of Biovalue." Health: an Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 6 (2002): 305-323.

Hayden, Cori. "From Market to Market: Bioprospecting's Idioms of Inclusion." American Ethnologist 30 (2003): 359-371.

Buy at Amazon Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. "The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in 'Fresh' Organs." In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Edited by Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 145-167. ISBN: 9781405123587.

6 Biodiversity, natural and artificial

Massey, Adrianne. "Crops, Genes, and Evolution." Gastronomica 1 (Summer 2001): 20-29.

Buy at Amazon Gusterson, Hugh. "Decoding the Debate on 'Frankenfood'." In Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties. Edited by Betsy Hartmann, Banu Subramaniam, and Charles Zerner. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 109-133. ISBN: 9780742549074.

Buy at Amazon Haraway, Donna. "Mice Into Wormholes: A Technoscience Fugue in Two Parts." In Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York, NY: Routledge, 1997, pp. 55-63 and 79-94. ISBN: 9780415912457.

Mansfield, Barbara. "From Catfish to Organic Fish: Making Distinctions about Nature as Cultural Economic Practice." Geoforum 34 (2003): 329-342.

7 Race in the genomic age

Buy at Amazon Gould, Stephen Jay. "Why We Should Not Name Human Races—A Biological View." In Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History. New York, NY: Norton, 1992, pp. 231-236. ISBN: 9780393308181.

Smedley, Audrey. "'Race' and the Construction of Human Identity." American Anthropologist 100 (1999): 690-702.

Buy at Amazon Duster, Troy. "The Sociology of Science and the Revolution in Molecular Biology." In The Blackwell Companion to Sociology. Edited by Judith R. Blau. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001, pp. 213-226. ISBN: 9780631213185.

Rotimi, Charles. "Genetic Ancestry Tracing and African Identity: A Double-Edged Sword?" Developing World Bioethics 3 (2003): 151-158.

Reardon, Jenny. "The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction." Social Studies of Science 31 (2001): 357-388.

Montoya, Michael. "Bioethnic Conscription: Genes, Race, and Mexicana/o Ethnicity in Diabetes Research." Cultural Anthropology 22 (2007): 94-128.

Kahn, Jonathan. "Patenting Race." Nature Biotechnology 24 (2006): 1349.

8 Remixing sex

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. "The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough." The Sciences (March-April 1993): 20-24.

Chase, Cheryl. "Hermaphrodites with Attitude: Mapping the Emergence of Intersex Political Activism." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 4 (1998): 189-212.

Buy at Amazon Thompson, Charis. "Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship in an Infertility Clinic." In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 175-202. ISBN: 9780822327967.

Buy at Amazon Franklin, Sarah. "Sex." In Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 19-45. ISBN: 9780822339205.

9 Animals, wild and domestic

Ritvo, Harriet. "Race, Breed, and Myths of Origin: Chillingham Cattle as Ancient Britons." Representations 39 (1992): 1-22.

Grasseni, Christa. "Designer Cows: The Practice of Cattle Breeding between Skill and Standardization." Society and Animals 13 (2005): 33-49.

Buy at Amazon Haraway, Donna. "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden." In Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Societies. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990, pp. 26-58. ISBN: 9780415902946.

Buy at Amazon Mitman, Gregg. "Domesticating Nature on the Television Set." In Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Washington, WA: University of Washington Press, 2009, pp. 132-156. ISBN: 9780295988863.

10 Biotechnology and biopolitical art

Buy at Amazon Landecker, Hannah. Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780674023284.

Buy at Amazon Kac, Eduardo, ed. "Art that Looks You in the Eye: Hybrids, Clones, Mutants, Synthetics, and Transgenics." In Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006, pp. 1-27. ISBN: 9780262112932.

Buy at Amazon Munster, Anna. "Bioaesthetics as Bioethics." In Art in the Biotech Era. Edited by Melentie Pandilovski. Adelaide, Australia: Experimental Art Foundation, 2008, pp. 14-21. ISBN: 9780949836526.

11 Biology and computers

Buy at Amazon Keller, Evelyn Fox. "The Body of a New Machine: Situating the Organism between Telegraphs and Computers." In Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996, pp. 79-118. ISBN: 9780231102056.

Buy at Amazon Helmreich, Stefan. "Kinship in Hypertext: Transubstantiating Fatherhood and Information Flow in Artificial Life." In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Edited by Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 116-143. ISBN: 9780822327967.

Kelty, Chris, and Hannah Landecker. "A Theory of Animation: Cells, L-systems, and Film." Grey Room 17 (2004): 30-63.

Myers, Natasha. "Animating Mechanism: Animations and the Propagation of Affect in the Lively Arts of Protein Modeling." Science Studies 19 (2006): 6-30.

12 Earthly aliens Buy at Amazon Helmreich, Stefan. Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780520250628.
13 Class conference