Sarah Richardson, Harvard University, CCHS Distinguished Speaker

“Birth Weight and the Biosocial Body: A Critical History ”
When Jan 26, 2017
from 04:00 PM to 05:00 PM
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“Birth Weight and the Biosocial Body: A Critical History ”

Sarah Richardson of Harvard will present her current research on the science of maternal-fetal effects.  She will address normative questions about maternal control and agency in scientific and public health discourses about maternal-fetal effects.  

Professor Richardson is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. She is jointly appointed in the Department of the History of Science and the Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Richardson’s research uses the tools of history, philosophy, and social studies of science to analyze how scientists, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, understand sex and gender.  She is author of Sex Itself: The Search for Male and Female in the Human Genome (2013) and is currently completing a second book, The Maternal Imprint, forthcoming from University of Chicago Press. She has published two edited volumes, Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (2008) and Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology After the Genome (2015), articles in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, BioSocieties, The Hastings Report, and Biology and Philosophy, and commentaries in Nature, PNAS, and the Journal of Neuroscience. Her work has also appeared in popular forums such as Slate, CNN.com, and The Boston Globe.  Richardson’s research has been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Association of University Women. She is a member of the Governing Board of the International Association for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology and an Associate Editor at Signs

Presented by the Commonwealth Center for the Humanities & Society.  Learn more about CCHS and its programs here