Events
Society for the Social Studies of Science
Upcoming Event
Congratulations to our graduates!
Congratulations to the class of 2017! For more information, visit the official commencement website.
ModLab video game on STEAM
"Play the Knave," a video game developed at the UC Davis ModLab by Prof. Gina Bloom and her team of researchers, is now on Steam Greenlight!
Upcoming Events
Upcoming Events in the UC Davis STS Program
Racial Reconciliation, Institutional Morality, and the Social Life of DNA with Dr. Alondra Nelson
Please RSVP for this Feminist Seminar, as lunch will be served. Presented by Gender, Sexuality & Womens' Studies, co-sponsored by STS.
"Figuring Opacity"
Asbjørn Grønstad (University of Bergen) presents his research on the subject of opacity in visual culture, tracing the predilection for low definition from classical film theory to the digital era.
Fictionalizing Anthropology: The Inescapable Creativity of Research and Writing with Stuart McLean
RSVP for a Food For Thought event presented by STS and the Anthropology Colloquium Series, including a poetry and video session, with Stuart McLean.
"Shibboleths in the Studio: On Boundary Objects for Boundary-Work" with Dr. Owen Marshall
Please RSVP to receive the pre-circulated text for this Food For Thought with STS Postdoc Owen Marshall. Refreshments will be provided.
Jan 30: Sherryl Vint, "Living in Post-Vital Times"
A Food for Thought Event: RSVP requested
March 6: Luis Campos, "Neanderthals in Space"
George Church’s Modest Steps Toward Possible Futures
April 4th: STS Colloquium with Gwen Ottinger, "From Sensing to Sense-Making: the Next Frontier in Citizen Science"
Please rsvp: goo.gl/forms/IWDgzqHFRs4T5IqX2
Andrew Mathews, "Sensing Disaster and Transformation: Modeling the Dramas of Italian Forest Futures"
Public Lecture presented by the Anthropology Department Colloquium, co-sponsored by STS.
Talk by Natasha Myers
Public lecture presented by the Anthropology Department Colloquium, co-sponsored by STS.
Past Events
Events that have already happened.
Calendar
STS Calendar
April 18th: Food For Thought with Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern
An event co-hosted by STS, CSIS, and Anthropology.
April 10th: Bruce Clarke, "Bruno Latour's Gaia Theory"
Please RSVP: https://bit.ly/2I98lvE
duskin drum, "served or served?"
“served or served?” is a participatory modeling of parallel structures of servers, and inherent limits in the restricting protocols of the operations and architecture of the network. It is a participatory performance that mimics some aspects of servers and data centers while discussing their material life. The performance or game makes a human allegorical interpretation of the structure and materiality of our dispersed everyday digital knowing. http://undeveloping.info
Mycelial Gaming in the Fungal Queendom
A game by Stephanie Maroney, Anuj Vaidya, Mercedes Villalba
Kris Peterson and Kaushik Sunder Rajan, "Multi-scalar, Multi-si(gh)ted"
A conversation on methods and ethnographic research design with Kris Peterson and Kaushik Sunder Rajan Conversation will be based on pre-circulated materials and short presentations from the speakers. Please RSVP at http://bit.ly/KPKSRcolloquiumreg to receive materials. Kris Peterson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine. She is the author of Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria (Duke, 2014) and is currently working on several projects. The first studies failed HIV-related clinical trials in several African countries (with Morenike Oluwatoyin Folayan). A second project on “viral geopolitics” examines how four resilient and changing viruses in West Africa and the Sahel index political struggles and geopolitical formations underway since September 11, 2001. A third project is a handbook that teaches how to conceptualize and implement multiscalar ethnography in dissertation projects and beyond (with Valerie Olson). She will speak about the latter as well as graduate training in research design. Kaushik Sunder Rajan is Professor of Anthropology at University of Chicago. He works on the political economy of the life sciences and biomedicine, and is the author of Biocapital: The Constitution of Post-Genomic Life (Duke, 2007), editor of Lively Capital: Biotechnologies, Ethics, and Governance in Global Markets (Duke, 2012), and author of Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine (Duke, 2017). He is beginning a new research project which looks at intersections between health and law in South Africa and India. He has just completed a book on the praxis of multi-sited ethnography, "Multi-si(gh)ted", currently under consideration by University of Chicago Press, and will speak to some of the concerns and arguments of the book. co-sponsored by Sociocultural Anthropology Colloquium and Science and Technology Studies
Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway, "Making Kin Not Population"
*This event has been relocated to 107 Art Annex* The discussion will be based on the authors' essay collection, Making Kin Not Population: Reconceiving Generations (2018). We will use a modified Food For Thought format, combining short presentations from our speakers with active audience discussion. The authors have requested that participants read three chapters (they are short!): Adele Clarke’s introduction, Donna Haraway’s chapter, “Making Kin in the Chthulucene,” and a third chapter of the reader’s choice.
Futurity Factory: A Symposium on Speculative Media, Science & Technology
Futurity Factory is a one-day symposium that will bring together humanities faculty and graduate students to explore the agency of the arts and cultural production in shaping epistemic, technological and scientific change. This symposium aims to galvanize cutting-edge and interdisciplinary research on the cultural construction of the future. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English, Science and Technology Studies, Cinema and Digital Media, The UC Humanities Research Institute and the UC Davis Humanities Institute.
Symposium: Nothingness/Emptiness/Absence
What is emptiness? Why is there very little academic vocabulary to talk about emptiness and nothingness? Clearly, since its metaphysical foundations in classic Greek thought, the notion of Being has occupied a privileged position in Western philosophy. To talk about being is just common sense; yet to talk about emptiness is at least paradoxical. What alternative forms of social organization and justice emerge when we consider ourselves as processes (selving) and not as essential substance? The (un)becoming that accompanies becoming-with usually unra- vels into the relatively obscure place of nihilism, in the form of nothingness. This is partially produced because we are trapped in the metaphysics of presence, of positivism. It absents absence; it fills emptiness; it speaks over silences. This one-day symposium invite us to take indeterminancy, negative facts, abscences, nothingness, and emptiness as furniture of the world. This symposium will be a jam conversation between Asian Philosophy, Critical Thinking, the Arts, and Contemporary Physics.
California STS Retreat
This year marks our 13th annual California STS retreat at the beautiful Nature Bridge venue in the Marin Headlands. The retreat this year will feature a variety of workshops and social activities, including: * STS in 2 minutes * Dissertation proposal groups * Mini-Workshops taught by faculty * Professionalization Sessions (grants, jobs, book proposals, writing, teaching, etc.) * Slideshare Karaoke! * Nature & Beach Theory Walks * Great meals and lots of coffee in collectable swag New for this year: in addition to graduate student professionalization activities, we will also introduce some programming focusing on research and professionalization for early career faculty. Registration is due by March 22: https://goo.gl/forms/dBEz1cRtImdSHMBu2 For details, or to be added to the email list, please email Melissa at cal.sts.network@gmail.com.
STS coffee
Join STS faculty and grads for a weekly gathering with coffee, snacks, conversation, and work space.
