The Office of the President,
Simon Fraser University
together with
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The
Faculty of Health Sciences, The Department of
English, The School of Communication, The
Department of History, The Department of
Women’s Studies, The Department of Sociology
and Anthropology
and
The Science and Technology Studies Graduate
Program and The Situating Science Cluster Grant
at the University of British Columbia
Liminal Livestock
a lecture by
Susan Squier
Brill Professor of Women’s Studies and English
Director of The Science, Medicine and Technology in Culture Program
The Pennsylvania State University
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
7:00-8:30 pm
Fletcher Challenge Theatre
Room 1900
SFU Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
Adapting SubRosa Art Collective’s memorable question, this talk asks: “What does it mean, to feminism and to agriculture, that women are like chickens and chickens are like women?” As liminal livestock, chickens play a central role in our gendered agricultural imaginary: the zone where we find the “speculative, propositional fabric of agricultural thought.” Analyzing several children’s stories, a novel, and a documentary film, the talk seeks to discover some of the factors that help to shape the role of women in agriculture, and the role of agriculture in women’s lives.
A member of the editorial board of The Journal of Medical Humanities and Past President of The Society for Literature and Science, Dr. Squier is one of the foremost authorities on cultural and feminist studies of science and medicine. She is the author of Babies in Bottles: Twentieth-Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (1994) and Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (2004), and co-editor of Playing Dolly: Technocultural Formations, Fantasies, and Fictions of Assisted Reproduction (1999). Her talk is part of a new book forthcoming from Rutgers University Press.
This lecture is free and open to the public, but space is limited. To reserve a spot please RSVP to peter_dickinson@sfu.ca
