Past Events

Winter 2019

11 February
Back to the Future: An STS Approach to Markets
Larry Busch, Michigan State University

18 March
Just in Time: Chronopolitics of the Queue
Julie Chu, University of Chicago
Co-sponsored by the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies

8 April
STS Distinguished Lecture
Race and Erasure: A People’s History of the ‘Normal’ Body
Laura Stark, Vanderbilt University

Special Events

28 January
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today
UMMA Exhibit Tour and Discussion with
Osman Khan, Penny Stamps School of Art
Anna Watkins Fisher, American Culture
Co-sponsored by the University of Michigan Museum of Art, American Culture/Digital Studies Program

25 February
Beyond Crisis: Science and Technology Studies in the Age of Emergency
Presenters: Nick Caverly and Nishita Trisal, Anthropology; James Arnott, Environment & Sustainability
Discussant: Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, India

12 April
STS Symposium: “TempoRealities”
9:00-5:00pm, ISR Conference Room, Thompson St

Fall 2018

17 September
Collecting Bodies, Bodily Collectives: Trace Identities in British India, 1918-47
Projit Bihari Mukharji, University of Pennsylvania
Co-sponsored by Center for South Asian Studies

8 October
Alternative Facts and States of Fear: Reality in the Age of Climate Fictions
Joanna Radin, Yale University

22 October
Unbalancing the Senses and Sciences of Moving Fascia: Practicing Research
Joseph Dumit, University of California, Davis
Cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology

5 November
Community as Ecofact or Artifact: Myths Of Meritocracy and ‘Fun Work’ in North-South American Field Science Collaborations
Mary Leighton, UM-Department of Anthropology

Monday, 3 December
The Sentimental Body: Medical Humanitarianism and the Late Colonial Public in Indonesia
Kevin Ko, UM-History
 

Related Events

14 September
The Promise of Making: Desiring Alternatives and Hacking Entrepreneurial Living in China
Silvia Lindtner, U-M School of Information

20 September
Crowded Places: Slavery, Science, and the Roots of Fresh Air in the Atlantic World
Jim Downs, Connecticut College

26 October
Technosemiotics Workshop
Matthew Hull, U-M Anthropology; Miyako Inoue, Stanford University; Brian Larkin, Columbia University

5 December
New Book Panel: Robo sapiens japanicus: Gender, Family, and the Japanese Nation by Jennifer Robertson
Jennifer Robertson, U-M Anthropology; Joy Rohde, U-M Public Policy; Alexandra Stern, U-M American Culture, History, Women's Studies, Obstetrics & Gynecology

6 December
Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
Virginia Eubanks, SUNY-Albany

Winter 2018

29 January
The Matter of Black Lives: Hauntology, Infrastructure, and the Necropolitics of History in the American South
Erica James, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Department for Afroamerican and African Studies, Department of American Culture

12 February
Translating the Cell Biology of Aging? The Importance of Choreographing Knowledge
Tiago Moriera, Durham University, UK

19 February
Indigenous Climate Change Studies and Justice: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene
Kyle Whyte, Michigan State University
Co-sponsored by the Program in Native American Studies, Department of Philosophy

12 March STS Distinguished Lecture
Making Postcolonial Bodies: Tales for An‘Other’ Enlightenment
Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Co-sponsored by the Department of Women’s Studies and the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Center for South Asian Studies

26 March
On Labeling Rules for Genetically Modified (GM) Food in India: Power and Pressure within the Federal Government
Aniket Aga, UM-School for Environment and Sustainability

9 April
Credibility Struggles in Times of Tectonic Upheaval: Rethinking Civic Epistemologies around Indian Nuclear Power Politics
Monamie Bhadra, Ohio State University
Co-sponsored by Program in Science, Technology & Public Policy, School for Environment and Sustainability, Center for South Asian Studies

Related Events

21 February
War, Medicine, and Cultural Diplomacy: Transnational Scientific Relations between the U.S. and Brazil in the 1940s
Simone P Kropf, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation/Fiocruz, Brazil
Joel Howell, University of Michigan

15 March
Embodied Memory and Affective Imagination: Experiencing Food Allergies in Contemporary Japan
Emma Cook, Hokkaido University

19 March
Digital Development: Governance, the State, and Information Technology in East Africa
Warigia Bowman, University of Arkansas

Fall 2017

2 October
Representations as Material Forms: Developing a Materialist Perspective on Digital Information
Paul Dourish, University of California, Irvine

13 November
Satisfied Callers: Police and Corporate Customer Service Technology in India
Matthew Hull, U-M Department of Anthropology

11 December
Dissonant Infrastructures: The Tensions between Science and Public Health Embedded in Sickle Cell Disease in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Melissa Creary, U-M School of Public Health, Department of Health Management and Policy

Related Events

11 September
Robocalypse Now? Technology and the Future of Work
Kevin LaGrandeur, New York Institute of Technology

25 September
Feminism and the Biological Sciences: New Directions
Kristen Springer, Rutgers University
Stacey A. Ritz, McMaster University
Sarah Richardson, Harvard University

2 October
People Against Climate Change: Resistance Through Art
MC2: Michigan and the Climate Crisis

Winter 2017

30 January
Innovation on the Reservation: Information Technology and Health Systems Research Among the Papago Tribe of Arizona, 1965-1980
Jeremy Green, Johns Hopkins University
Co-sponsored by Medical Scientist Training Program, Michigan Medical School

13 February
Hidden Vulnerability and Other Stories: Power, Structure, and Nuclear Disaster in Japan
Sulfikar Amir, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Co-sponsored by Center for Japanese Studies

20 February
Ctrl+Z: The Right to be Forgotten
Meg Jones, Georgetown University
Co-sponsored by Michigan Interactive and Social Computing

6 March
Incidental News: The Consumption of Current Events Information among Young People
Pablo Boczkowski, Northwestern University
Co-sponsored by the Department of Communications Studies

20 March
Pentagon Midwest: Military Research and the Making of the University of Michigan
LSA Bicentennial Event
Co-sponsored by LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester

10 April
The Seductions of Quantification: The Politics of Measuring Human Rights and Gender Violence
Sally Engle Merry, New York University
Co-sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender

Related Events

3 February
Politicized Science: Why Evidence Still Matters
Sharyn Clough, Oregon State University
Sponsored by Feminist Science Studies

27 March
Patents, Social Justice, and Public Responsibility Symposium
Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities and Ford School of Public Policy

27 March
Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the U.S. and Europe
Shobita Parthasarathy, Ford School of Public Policy
Co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities and Ford School of Public Policy

19 April
Towards a Civic Techno-Science
Sara Wylie, Northwestern University
Sponsored by the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program

Fall 2016

12 September
The Butcher's Philosophy: Situating Human Health in a Metabolic Landscape
Hannah Landecker, UCLA

30 September
STS Mini-Conference: Translating Bodies
Keynote: Joel Howell, U-M History, Medical School, School of Public Health

31 October
Social Media in Political Branding: Narendra Modi and the New Twitter Technocrat
Joyojeet Pal, U-M School of Information

5 December
Toward Anti-Ontology: The Unmaking of Chronic Pain in Thailand
Scott Stonington, U-M Athropolgy, Global Environmental Health, Internal Medicine, VA Hospital

Related Events

14 October
From Subjects to Relations: Bioethics and Postcolonial Politics in an HIV Prevention Trial in Cambodia
Jenna Grant, University of Washington

4 November
Sundara Soap: Fighting Preventable Hygiene-Related Deaths and Disease in Myanmar, India, and Uganda
Erin Zaikis, Founder, Sundara Soap

Winter 2016

11 January
Data Mining: The Critique of Artificial Reason, 1963-2005
Matthew Jones, Columbia University
Co-sponsored by the Digital Studies Program

25 January  -   CANCELLED
The Emperor’s New Genes: Science, Race, Policy, and the Allure of Objectivity
Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University
Co-sponsored by Feminist Science Studies and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies

8 February
Soda, Love, and Public Health in Mexico City: A Bio-ethnography
Elizabeth Roberts, Anthropology, University of Michigan

22 February
Biotrash: The Afterlives of Medical Garbage in India
Sarah Hodges, University of Warwick
Co-sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies

4 April  -  CANCELLED
Japan’s Triple Disaster
Brett Walker, Montana State University
Co-sponsored by Center for Japanese Studies

Related Events

2 February
Ebola and Its Response: Notes from Ongoing Fieldwork in West Africa
Vinh-kim Nguyen, University de Montreal, University of Amsterdam
Sponsored by the Africa Workshop

15 March
Energy, Containers and the Anthropocene in West Africa
Emily Osborn, University of Chicago
Sponsored by the African History and Anthropology RIW

18 March
The Crisis in Crisis
Joseph Masco, University of Chicago
Co-sponsored by the Anthropology & History Workshop, STS and Science & Tech RIW

31 March
Networking Peripheries: Technological Futures, Digital Memory and the Myth of Digital Universalism
Anita Say Chan, University of Illinois
Sponsored by the School of Information, Digital Futures Series

7 April
Communicating Self in a Networked World
Natalie Bazarova, Cornell University
Sponsored by the School of Information, Digital Futures Series

12 April
Critical Internet Cultures: From Selfie Cult to Mask Design
Geert Lovink, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Sponsored by the School of Information, Digital Futures Series

Fall 2015

12 October
Data, Madness, and Genetics in Germany from 1900 to the 1930s
Theodore M. Porter, University of California, Los Angeles
Co-sponsored by the Program in Society and Medicine

26 October
Body Burdens: Toxic Endurance in the French Atlantic
Vanessa Agard-Jones, Yale University
Co-sponsored  by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies

9 November
Dirty Bits: Environmental History of the Computer
Nathan Ensmenger, Indiana University
**4:00-5:30 pm, 2435 North Quad
Co-sponsored  by the Integrated Assessment Center of the Graham Institute for Sustainability Studies, and the School of Natural Resources and the Environment

7 December
Graduate Student Panel:
Current Research at the Intersection of STS and Queer Studies

Jamie Budnick (Sociology) “What We Ask about When We Ask about Sex”

Stephen Molldrem (American Culture) “Enacting Queer STS: Case Studies”

Angie Perone (Sociology & Social Work) “Queer Contagions, Social Quarantines, and Digital Antidotes for LGBT Older Adults”

Related Events

21 September
Moms and Newborns: Public Duties and Personal Concerns in Immunizations and Newborn Screening
Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado, Denver  
Beth Tarini, University of Michigan
** 3:10 pm, 2239 Lane Hall
Sponsored by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender

28 September
Beyond Adequacy: Hydro-Electrics and Mayan Power in the Terminal Modern
Diane Nelson, Duke University
** 2:30-4:00 pm, 3512 Haven Hall
Sponsored by Latin American & Caribbean Studies, co-sponsored by STS

6 November
The Genealogy of a Gene: Patents, HIV/AIDS, and Race
Myles Jackson, New York University
** 12:00 pm, North Lecture Hall, 3695 Medical Sci II
Sponsored by the Program in Boimedical Sciences, co-sponsored by STS

Winter 2015

26 January
STS Grad Student Panel

Objects of Exclusion: Open Questions on the Global South of Technology Studies
  Robyn d’Avignon, Anthropology & History
  RJ Koscielniak, Urban & Regional Planning
  Geoffrey Hughes, Anthropology
  Jeffrey Albanese, Social Work & Anthropology

23 February
Transcontinental Drug Traffic: Chemical Arbitrage, Speculative Capital, and Pharmaceutical Markets in Nigeria [CANCELLED]
Kristin Peterson, University of California-Irvine
Co-sponsored by the African Studies Center

9 March
The Biopolitical Imagination: A New Politics of Human Biotechnology
Marcy Darnovsky, Center for Genetics and Society (California)
Co-sponsored by Science, Technology and Public Policy

23 March
The Envelope Please! Seeds and Knowledge
Lisa Gitelman, New York University
Co-sponsored by American Culture and the Digital Studies Workshop

STS Distinguished Lecture
13 April
What if the Actor were an Eater? Notes on Moving and Transforming
Annemarie Mol, University of Amsterdam
Co-sponsored by Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Feminist Science Studies, Program in Society and Medicine, and Department of Anthropology

Related Events

6 February
Beyond Life/Not Life: A Feminist-Indigenous Reading of Cryopreservation Practices and Ethics, Interspecies Thinking, and the New Materialisms
Kim TallBear, University of Texas at Austin
Sponsored by Feminist Science Studies
 

Fall 2014

22 September
Energy, Security, and America’s Long War in the Middle East
Toby Jones, Rutgers University
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the International Institute

6 October
The Science of Hearts and Minds: Psychology and Counterinsurgency in the British Empire
Erik Linstrum, University of Michigan

27 October
Tremors, Critters, and Senses: Animals as Detectors of Earthquakes in Communist China
Fa-ti Fan, State University of New York-Binghamton
Co-sponsored by the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, Program in the Environment, and the School of Natural Resources and Environment

17 November
Coevolutionary History
Ed Russell, University of Kansas
Co-sponsored by the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the School of Natural Resources and Environment

Related Events

25 September
Stretching Time: Quantum Legacies in Analog and Digital Media
Jonathan Sterne, McGill University
Sponsored by Digital Studies Workshop

27 October
HPV and the Expanding Sexual Politics of Cancer Prevention
Laura Mamo, San Francisco State University
Sponsored by Feminist Science Studies

Winter 2014

13 January
Re-Locating Race: Edward Long and the History of Jamaica
Suman Seth, Cornell University

10 February
Money in Motion: Circulation in Early Modern Science, Political Economy, and Debates over Currency and Banking
Jefffrey Sklansky, University of Illinois at Chicago

17 March
The Work of Diagrams: Translations from Factory to Hospital
Joy Knoblauch, U-M, School of Architecture and Urban Planning

31 March
What Can STS Do for Africa That Marx Couldn't?
Clapperton Mavhunga,Massachusetts Institute of Technology

11 April
Sex, Race & Sciences of Human Behavior
Helen Longino, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Related Talks

11 February
Earth, Water, Power: The Ecology of War in North China’s Henan Province, 1938-1950
Micah Muscolino, Georgetown University

22 April
Neither Donkey nor Horse: Medicine and the Struggle over China’s Modernity
Sean Hsiang-lin Lei, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica,Taiwan
 

Fall 2013

9 September
How Political Violence Became Terrorism
Lisa Stampnitzky, Harvard University

30 September
Banking on DNA Futures: Thinking About Non-Invasive Prenatal Tests in Comparative Contexts
Rayna Rapp, New York University

7 October
The Infrastructure of Post-Imperial Citizenship: The Global Adoption of the South African Model of Biometric Government
Keith Breckenridge, University of Witwatersrand

4 November
Technoscientific Tests and the Future of Athletic Competition
Rayvon Fouché, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

18 November
Making Media Work: Time, Space, Identity, and Labor in the Analysis of Information and Communication Infrastructures
Greg Downey, University of Wisconsin, Madison

9 December
Technogigantism from Below: The Quest to Flood the Kalahari, 1920-1950
Meredith McKittrick, Georgetown University

Winter 2013

14 January
Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women's Labor and the Gendering of Semiconductor Manufacture
Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan

28 January
What STS Can Learn from the Black Panther Party
Alondra Nelson, Columbia University

25 February
The Tocqueville of Techniques: Michel Chevalier and the Cosmic Geography of the USA
John Tresch, University of Pennsylvania

25 March
STS and Latin America
Eden Medina, Indiana University

1 April
STS Distinguished Speaker 2012
The Rise and Fall of Natural Disasters: Rethinking Risk and Responsibility
Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute / University of Chicago

Related Talks

IRWG Feminist Science Studies Series
14 March
Community Ecologies: Invasive Species and Interdisciplinary Crossings
Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Peggy Schultz, Indiana University
James Bever, Indiana University

19 April
Race and Genes
Joan Fujimura, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Fall 2012

17 September
The Perils and Promises of Microbial Abundance: Science, Politics, and Value, from Artisan Cheese to Alien Seas
Stefan Helmreich and Heather Paxson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

22 October
Print Disability and the Emergence of Audio Book Formats
Mara Mills, New York University

5 November
Engineers’ Class Struggle and the Question of ‘Technology’ in German and American High Industrialism
Adelheid Voskuhl, Harvard University

26 November
The Sciences of Facial Feminization Surgery
Eric Plemons, McGill University

Related Events

20 September
The Concept of Persona in Bioethics and the Philosophy of Tetsuro WATSUJI
Masahiro Morioka, Osaka Prefecture University

20 September
Montevideo takes Manhattan: The Latin American Provenance of the Global Children’s Health/Children’s Rights Movement
Anne-Emanuelle Birn, University of Toronto

27 September
Creating (Dis)Advantage: How Global Health Statistics Work
Susan Erikson, Simon Fraser University

24 October
Reinvention of Chronic Disease in the 20th Century
George Weisz, McGill University

Winter 2012

23 January
Servant to Science: The Aspiration, Frustration, and Defiance of Saul Sithole of the Transvaal Museum
Nancy Jacobs, Brown University

13 February
The Child Toileth Not, But the Statistician Does: The Labor History of U.S. Labor Statistics, 1880-1930
Thomas Stapleford, Rutgers University

5 March
Creation, Ontology, and Refusal in an Oncology Ward
Julie Livingston, Rutgers University

23 March
STS Distinguished Speaker 2012
Place and Path-Dependence in the Emergence of Automated Trading
Donald MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh

9 April
Digital Inequality and Its Implications for Internet Research
Eszter Hargittai, Northwestern University

Related Talks

Jan 10
Wastelands and Wilderness
Peter Galison, Harvard University
Presented by U-M Taubman School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Jan 11
Einstein, Clocks, and the Materiality of Time
Peter Galison, Harvard University
Presented by U-M Institute for the Humanities

10 February
Tales of the Evolution of Female Orgasm and Adaptationist and Sexists Biases in Research
Elisabeth Lloyd, Indiana University
Presented by IRWG Feminist Science Studies Series

20 March
Feminist Interventions in the Sciences and in Epistemology: Significant Parallels
Phyllis Rooney, Oakland University

Fall 2011

3 October
The Making of a Techno-Political Device: Expertise, Prepayment Technology and the Materiality of Politics in South Africa
Antina von Schnitzler, The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs

24 October
Credibilizing Spaces (a.k.a. ‘ Truth Spots ’)
Thomas Gieryn, Indiana University

14 November
Challenging Sociality? Humanoid Robots and Their Therapeutic Use amongst Children with Autism Spectrum Conditions
Kathleen Richardson, University College London

5 December
Entanglements of Aging and Dementia: Pathological Brains and Healthy Minds
Margaret Lock, McGill University

Related Events

Davenport Lecture in Medical Humanities
10 October
As Others Have Seen Us: Graphic Art and the Art of Medicine
Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, Yale University School of Medicine

17 October
Hunger in America: The Gender Politics of Race, Poverty and Malnutrition
Laurie Green, University of Texas at Austin

Winter 2011

11 January
Whither Cosmopolitan Science? Reflections on Changing Networks of European Scientific Correspondence during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
Elise Lipkowitz, University of Michigan-History

15 March
American Engineers in the Postwar World:  Global Techno-science, Local Environments, and US Imperialism after World War II
Linda Nash, University of Washington

12 April
Two Aging American Ornithologists at the End of European Empire in Africa
Nancy Jacobs, Brown University

Fall 2010

21 September
Cents and Sensibility: Economic Valuation and the Nature of ‘Nature’ in France and America
Marion Fourcade, University of California-Berkeley

12 October
How Geneticists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Mutation
Nathaniel Comfort, Johns Hopkins University

2 November
Breaking the Expertise Barrier: New Politics of the Patent System in the United States and Europe
Shobita Parthasarathy, UM-Ford School of Public Policy

9 November
Struggles over Water, Struggles Over Energy, Struggles Over Memories: Cahora Bassa Dam, 1965-2008
Allen Isaacman, University of Minnesota

7 December
STS Distinguished Lecture
Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies
David Albright, President, Institute for Science and International Security

Related Events

14 October
The Green Light of a New World: Americans and the Limits of Nature
Donald Worster, University of Kansas

10th Davenport Lecture in Medical Humanities
19 October
Every Generation: Family Secrets and Their Consequences
Steve Luxenburg, The Washington Post

Science, Technology & Public Policy Series
20 September
Reinventing Technology Assessment in the US: A 21st Century Model
Richard Sclove, Founder and Senior Fellow of the Loka Institute

25 October
The Climate Fix: A Pragmatic Future for Climate Change
Roger Pielke, Jr., University of Colorado-Boulder

8 November
Humanitarian Work in a Changing Climate:  How Can the Ford School and the Red Cross Help Each Other?
Pablo Suarez, Associate Director of International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

22 November
Threading a Very Fine Needle: Race, Gender, and the Public Policy of Reproductive Genetic Technologies
Sujatha Jesudason, Executive Director of Generations Ahead