Glands and Hormones: 20th-Century Hopes and Fears across the Northern Hemisphere

Meet me in Seattle for HSS 2018, November 14!

Once more, I organized a panel for the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, this time in collaboration with my friend Yize Hu. It will be a fantastic opportunity to discuss how 20th-century practitioners perceived the potential and perils of hormones in Japan, China, central Europe, Scotland, and the U.S. Join us if you can!

The overall panel:

Glands and Hormones: 20th-Century Hopes and Fears across the Northern Hemisphere
Research on glandular secretions and their metabolic impact transfigured the medico-scientific understanding of the body in the late 19th century. In 1905, British physiologist Ernest H. Starling (1866–1927) coined the word “hormone,” an umbrella term for secretions from various parts of the body. In the subsequent decades, glandular science flourished and fueled a refashioning of concepts such as aging, growth, reproduction, and sex/gender. This panel sheds light on various ways in which the hormonal view of the body impacted 20th-century science in Asia, Europe, and North America. What role did glands and hormones fulfill in scientific and social lives at different times and places? What hopes and fears were associated with interfering in the hormonal body? To what extent were hormone-related practices and theories mobile across space and time? The papers exemplify multiple connotations of hormones: they could be both promises and threats to human health, as well as disruptors or justifications of the contemporary social order. Furthermore, due to the double role of hormones as actively sexing/gendering (through their metabolic function) and passively sexed/gendered substances (through social ascriptions), hormonal theories and practices transcended the binaries between nature and nurture, and between the physical and the social world.

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Meet Me for 4S 2017 in Boston and Hear Me Talk about Intersectionalities

The second conference I signed up for this year is 4S in Boston, August 30 through September 2. I organized what should be an excellent panel on: “Working with/against the Politics of Benevolent Neuroscience.”

Giulia Anichini, Marisa Brandt, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Oliver Rollins, and myself will give talks. Check out the panel abstract:

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Meet Me at Cheiron 2017 and Learn about the Multiplicity of Neuro-Centrisms in Handedness Research around 1900

My paper “Left-Handed Complements: Forging Connections between Handedness, Speech Ability, and Brain Asymmetry around 1900” was recently admitted for presentation at Cheiron 2017, to be held at Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS, June 22 to 25.

The program is absolutely terrific!

Check out the (long) abstract of my own talk, to be recycled for Chapter 1 of my dissertation on anatomical theories of handedness in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Continue reading

ALL SHALL COME: Sorting Brains Out—Best Conference in a While

The conference I’ve been so busy with is finally coming together. We’re convening on September 18 and 19, shortly before the Pope comes to Philly (why does nobody really care about the Dalai Lama’s coming?!), and we’ll be discussing the history of the mind and brain sciences in the past 125 years. Check out the details here and look at our gorgeous poster below (thanks to Wing (Dyana) So, Ian Verstegen, and the Visual Studies Program at Penn)!

Guys, I’m so excited. And I don’t even want to hide it!

Yeah, yeah, yeah!! Designed by Wing T. (Dyana) So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah!!
Designed by Wing T. (Dyana) So.

DH and Me

I’m in Indianapolis for HILT 2015. The digital-humanities workshop on “Large-Scale Text Analysis with R” sounded as if it can help me to finally surmount the obstacle of several thousands of neuroscientific articles I will have to analyze in order to continue my project on adult neurogenesis. Mark Algee-Hewitt from Stanford’s Department of English is an awesome instructor and thus far, I’ve understood everything and was even able to ask a not-so-stupid question during the first session. (Why does R return “character” when I ask about the class of a vector whose contents are characters—and not “vector”?)

I know I promised to continue this post a long time ago—odds are that it will happen soon.

CfP and Invitation: “Sorting Brains Out,” University of Pennsylvania, Sept. 18–19, 2015

Please spread the word about “my” conference, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History and Sociology of Science, Sept. 18–19, 2015: “Sorting Brains Out: Tasks, Tests, and Trials in the Neuro- and Mind Sciences, 1890–2015.” Please publicize this announcement as widely as possible via faculty and grad student listservs, weblogs, newsletters, etc.

We will have graduate student and postdoctoral presentations on Friday. The list of confirmed speakers for Saturday includes Dr. Cathy Gere (University of California San Diego), Dr. Katja Guenther (Princeton University), Dr. Nicolas Langlitz (The New School), Dr. Emily Martin (New York University), Dr. Francisco Ortega (Rio de Janeiro State University), Dr. Tobias Rees (McGill University), and Dr. Matthew Wolf-Meyer (University of California Santa Cruz). All visitors are welcome to listen and discuss with us on both days.

Graduate students or postdoctoral scholars wishing to participate in the Friday sessions should submit an abstract of no more than 400 words to pennbrains2015@gmail.com by May 31, 2015. With your abstract submission, please indicate if you need any form of special accommodation.

If you have any questions, refer to the more detailed call for papers and/or contact us at pennbrains2015@gmail.com.

“A Critical Moment”: Sex/Gender and Brain Science Conference @ UCLA, 10/23–24

Here is a conference announcement I should have shared with you months ago: the Foundation for Psychocultural Research at the University of Californa in Los Angeles (FPR-UCLA) is hosting a conference titled “A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersection of Culture, Brain, & Behavior” this October, Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th.

Here is the announcement: Continue reading

HSS 2014 Brain Panel on Twitter

HSS 2014 was a phenomenal conference, and I have to admit that I liked my own panel best. My fellow panelists contributed fascinating papers and were just the nicest people to learn from (and with). It was a hitherto unprecedented opportunity to talk brains for me, having five brain papers on the same panel. We saw that several topics kept coming up (such as the economization of brains or minds and the animal/human divide, for instance). I gave you the panel information before; here is what made it to Twitter: Continue reading