Just wanted to share this image of a 3-D printed clitoris that I printed at the Wakerspace:
The file to print your own can be found here. It was created and made available for free by French independent researcher Odile Fillod. I think Fillod’s project is a wonderful example of feminist science studies and diy activism.
I am happy to announce that the edited collection, Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, has been published by Routledge. The volume is a wonderful collection of essays exploring the feminist and queer politics of asexuality. I have a chapter in the collection titled “Asexuality and Disability: Mutual Negation in Adams v. Rice and New Directions for Coalition Building.”
Here is a brief excerpt from the book description: “Together, these essays made out of a residency personal statement writing service challenge the ways in which we imagine gender and sexuality in relation to desire and sexual practice. Asexualities provides a critical reevaluation of even the most radical queer theorizations of sexuality. Going beyond a call for acceptance of asexuality as a legitimate and valid sexual orientation, the authors offer a critical examination of many of the most fundamental ways in which we categorize and index sexualities, desires, bodies, and practices.”
For more information about the book, and to order, please visit the book page on the Routledge website.
If you are affiliated with a college or university, please ask your institutional library to purchase a copy for their collection. A library recommendation form is available here.
Thank you very much to the editors, Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks, for their hard work on this volume and for their leadership in the field of asexuality studies.
Cross-posted with permission from the Neuroethics Blog.
Sara Freeman
Graduate Student
Department of Neuroscience
Emory University
In this post, I would like to highlight the work of another Emory graduate student, Sara Freeman. Just when Cyd Cipolla and I (in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) were coming up with our plan to teach an interdisciplinary course bringing together gender studies and neuroscience, we found out that Sara (in the Neuroscience Graduate Program) was developing her own interdisciplinary course bringing together developmental biology and the sociology of gender.Sara’s course, which she is teaching this semester, is called “Intersex: Biology & Gender,” and is cross-listed in the departments of Biology, Sociology, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. “Intersex” is a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with physical reproductive or sexual characteristics that cannot be easily classified as male or female (for more information, visit the Intersex Society of North America or the American Psychological Association’s page on intersex). FYI: October 26th was Intersex Awareness Day! In Sara’s course, she is teaching about both the developmental biology of intersex in humans and the social, political, legal and ethical issues related to intersex.
I wanted to interview Sara about her course because I see her work as highly relevant to the field of Neuroethics. First, Neuroethics benefits from interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists (especially neuroscientists) and researchers in the social sciences and the humanities, and by including material from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and by bringing together students from all of these fields, Sara’s course is fostering exactly the kind of interdisciplinary collaboration that Neuroethics needs. Second, Sara’s course is encouraging her students to grapple with important neuroethical and bioethical questions, including ethical issues related to the medical treatment of intersex individuals (see Dreger for a review) and ethical issues related to the use of intersex individuals as research subjects in scientific studies on sex/gender development. Read on to find out more about Sara’s course!
Cross-posted from The Neuroethics Blog (Emory Center for Ethics)
As Neuroethics Scholars Program Fellows, Cyd Cipolla and I designed an interactive discussion-based undergraduate course “Feminism, Sexuality, and Neuroethics,” which we are currently teaching this semester at Emory. In developing our course, we decided to devote one week to examining neuroscientific research on “sex addiction.” In recent years, neuroscientists have started to use imaging technology to explore the neurobiology of “out of control” sexual behavior (sometimes called sex addiction). In addition, some researchers and mental health professionals have argued that the neurobiology of sex addiction is the same as the neurobiology of drug addiction. However, a number of scholars have critiqued the category of sex addiction, arguing that it is a reflection of our cultural anxieties about high rates of sexual activity (Irvine 1995, Moser 2001). We are fortunate to have an engaged and intellectually diverse group of students and our discussions have proven thought-provoking for us and our students. After our in-class discussions, I was still left wondering whether it is appropriate to view “excessive” sexual interest as an addiction (and, specifically, as a “brain disease” or a “mental illness”) or as a socio-cultural construct dependent on sex-negative cultural values.
Thus, I was very excited by Dr. Steve Hyman’s visit to Emory, as Dr. Hyman is a leader in thinking about the neurobiology of drug addiction and in thinking through the ethical implications of neuroscientific research on drug addiction. During his visit, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask Dr. Hyman to share his thoughts about sex addiction. This blog is a “report back” on both his answer and on my further reflections about whether it is appropriate to use a disease model to understand sex addiction.
Here is the syllabus for Feminism, Sexuality, and Neuroethics. We have 18 students in the class; about half of the students are Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies majors or minors and about half of the students are Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology (NBB) majors or minors, about have the population wants to get sort of a SkinMD Laser & Cosmetic Group plastic surgery done, either on their face or body, so people go online to find information about how they can improve their body, and he pros and risks, there are sites as the Johnny Franco MD, FACS that put this information out there for the public. So far, the class is going very well. I look forward to reporting more as the semester progresses.
I am happy to report that my friend and colleague, Cyd Cipolla, and I have receieved a grant from the Neuroethics Program at the Emory Center for Ethics to teach a class in the spring on “Feminism, Sexuality, and Neuroethics.”
We are very excited about this opportunity, and I look forward to reporting on our experiences with this course.
Here is our course description:
Neuroethics is an emerging field that considers the interaction between neuroscience, behavioral biology and society. Major questions of concern within neuroethics include: How do scientific discoveries impact society? How can scientific researchers more fully understand the ethical implications of their work? The intersection of feminist science studies with the field of Neuroethics produces new ways to ask these questions, considering, for example, not only how science impacts society, but how scientific research is shaped by cultural assumptions. Ultimately, students in this class will combine the critical thinking skills from both of these fields to answer the question: How can we all be responsible consumers and/or producers of neuroscientific knowledge?
Students in this class will learn the major topics and themes within the field of Neuroethics through critically examining historical and contemporary scientific research on sexuality and the brain. Each unit of the class focuses on a different area within the field of scientific research on sexuality and the brain. Students will read the significant scientific study or studies on the topic alongside reports about the study in mainstream news media outlets, and then follow this by reading critiques of the work from both inside and outside the scientific community.
For example, one unit focuses on neuroscience and homosexuality. We will begin by reading Simon LeVay’s 1991 Science article, “A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual men” alongside articles written about the study in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek. We will then read a selection of responses to LeVay’s study both from others in his field, for example, the comment “Is Homosexuality Biological” by Marcia Barinaga that ran in Science, and from other disciplines, such as Peter Hegarty’s 1997 article, “Materializing the Hypothalamus” published in Feminism and Psychology.
This class is open to students in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. No previous experience with neuroscience research or sexuality research is required.
For the past year I have worked for the Emory Career Center reviewing personal statements and statements of purpose. Emory students applying for graduate programs can submit their personal statements to the Career Center for review and they come to me – it’s a great job. I get to read about the experiences and hopes of Emory students and I get to work with them to shape how they are presenting themselves to admissions committees.
I thought I would provide a few tips based on what I have learned over the past year. David Rubin, my predecessor in this position, created an excellent tip sheet, which is available on the Career Center website, so some of this post draws from his work.
Of course, there are differences between medical schools, law schools, business schools, and PhD programs in terms of what they are looking for, some people just want to do business, so starting with a spa franchise is sometimes a good idea and easy if you get help from sites as https://complexcityspa.com/spa-franchise-opportunity/. In future posts, I will provide some specific advice for each type of statement. Here are my top four tips for all personal statements/statements of purpose:
Recently, I participated in a workshop hosted by the Emory Office of Sustainability Initiatives designed to help graduate students incorporate sustainability issues into our courses, where they use the best shipping labels amazon and other office supplies. The workshop provided an overview of what sustainability means – basically, a commitment to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations. According to the workshop organizers, sustainability requires us to appreciate the interconnectedness of social, environmental, and economic systems and to work for social equity, environmental health, and economic growth simultaneously.
Sporadically, I teach a GRE prep course for Kaplan. I enjoy teaching the class – I like to think that by preparing students for the GRE, I am helping them to achieve their educational and career goals. I see improvement in my students over the course of the class, and I feel fairly confident that most, if not all, of my students benefit from the class. There is evidence that SAT prep classes may not be effective, but I don’t think anyone has conducted the kind of study (impact evaluation using randomized trials) that could really determine effectiveness. I am not aware of independent studies evaluating the effectiveness of GRE prep programs.