“Notes for the Feminist Science Lab/Classroom”: Possibilities for Queer and Feminist Science in the University

• In Event: Regenerating Research Culture: Feminist STS Approaches to STEM Graduate Methods

Abstract

Critical feminist science literacy presents multiple possibilities, opportunities, and challenges for facilitating the engaged learning of queer and feminist science in traditional science laboratories and classrooms within the University. This paper critically engages the instructive promise of one model of critical feminist science literacy, “Notes for the Feminist Science Lab/Classroom,” a graduate research project that draws on queer and feminist science histories, methods, praxis and activism to rewrite the terms of traditional scientific practices, ethics, and values that structure science laboratories and classrooms in the University, to produce more socially just, queer, feminist and democratic scientific research and knowledge. As such, “Notes for the Feminist Science Lab/Classroom” writes and rewrites several modules, instructions, and standards of practice commonly found on the introductory pages of traditional science textbooks, providing critical re-articulations of the histories, definitions, and descriptions of science and the scientific method, and the community standards, ethics, and safety practices for the laboratory and classroom, to facilitate the critical learning and practice of queer and feminist science histories, values and praxis within scientific research, experimentation, knowledge production, and laboratory life. Thus written as a model for queer and feminist science education and literacy, “Notes for the Feminist Science Lab/Classroom” seeks to be incorporated as a “living document” for instructors and graduate students alike to collaboratively and iteratively develop and transform science classrooms and laboratories within the University into spaces in which the histories, methods, praxis, and values of queer and feminist science may always be enlivened, fostered, and sustained.

Author

• Maya Cruz, University of California - Davis