Professor Evelyn Fox Keller, one of the foremost scholars on the relation between science and gender, is visiting Australia this year where she will speak on three occasions at the University of Sydney. On Monday 19 August at 6:15 p.m. in the Carslaw Building Fourth Floor Conference Room she will give a talk on 'Developmental Biology-A Feminist Cause?' This talk is sponsored jointly by WISENET, Sydney University Women's Studies Centre and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
On Thursday 22 August she will deliver the Templeton Lecture, 'Gender Language and Science' in the Stephen Roberts Theatre at 8 p.m.
Then on Saturday 24 August, Professor Fox Keller will give the keynote address, 'The Biological Gaze', at Sexing Science; An Interdisciplinary Conference on Knowledge, Bodies and Gender, organised by the University of Sydney Women's Studies Centre and the Department of History and Philosophy of Science. This conference will be held in the Menzies Common Room at the Women's College.
Evelyn Fox Keller's interests span the sciences and humanities. She has, among other degrees, a PhD from Harvard's Department of Physics and has held the post of Professor of Mathematics and Humanities at Northeastern University, USA. Currently, she works at MIT on the Program in Science, Technology and Society.
In A Feeling for the Organism (1983), Fox Keller gives a revealing account of the life and work of Barbara McClintock, a 'genius' in the cytology of maize genetics whose career remained so long on the margins of established scientific communities. Even so, she eventually won the Nobel prize for her work on genetic transposition. As a woman who wanted a career on her merits in the 1930's scientific world of men, McClintock had to contend with the accusations that she had 'personality difficulties'; she was a 'trouble-maker' and 'just an old bag who'd been hanging around Cold Springs Harbor for years'. As Fox Keller argues, McClintock's way of doing science was in a different language from her male colleagues, who for a long time did not understand her.
In Reflections on Gender and Science (1985), Fox Keller continues to explore difference and the many issues raised in her study of McClintock's life. Her particular research focus more recently has been on the way ideologies of gender influence the practice of science.