Perpetual Handmaidens: Creating Knowledge in the Shadows

Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Location: Knox Hall, 5th Floor (Room 509), Columbia University, 606 W. 122nd Street, New York

Sponsors: Columbia Center for Oral History Research (CCOHR), the Oral History Master of the Arts Program (OHMA), and the Program in Narrative Medicine. Support from the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE)

Read a list of names from publications in many fields of American science in the early to mid-twentieth century, and male authors dominate in nearly all cases. But look at photographs of research labs or of field expeditions in that same period. Then one often discovers women actively involved in science: making calculations, cataloguing species, doing laboratory measurements, or digging out dinosaur bones from exposed rock faces in Wyoming. Historians of science have long known that women often were unacknowledged and invisible partners in the production of knowledge. But it has been harder to understand what the experience meant for them. Oral history allows us to explore the contrasting experiences of male and female researchers. In this workshop, we will review the stories of women in science (broadly defined) in the mid-twentieth century, utilizing recent collections of interviews that include not only women researchers but the science-trained (but non-employed) spouses of male scientists. How did women scientists stake out claims for their achievements? What roles did women play in sustaining close-knit research communities? How can we gain new insights into the social dynamics of scientific practice through such interviews?

=> For more information, please contact Amy Starecheski, Associate Director of OHMA, or visit the OHMA site.

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