CFP: Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics

Call for contributions to a special issue of

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FEMINIST APPROACHES TO BIOETHICS (IJFAB)
Vol. 3, no. 2, Fall, 2010

From the Margins to the Center:
Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics
 
Guest Editor,  Shelley Tremain

In recent years, work done in mainstream bioethics has been challenged by the emerging field of disability studies. A growing number of disability theorists and activists point out that the views about disability and disabled people that mainstream bioethicists have articulated on matters such as prenatal testing, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide incorporate significant misunderstandings about them and amount to an institutionalized form of their oppression. While some feminist bioethicists have paid greater attention to the perspectives and arguments of disabled people than other bioethicists, these perspectives and arguments are rarely made central.  Feminist disability theory remains marginalized even within feminist bioethics. 

This issue of IJFAB will go some distance to move feminist disability studies from the margins to the center of feminist bioethics by highlighting the contributions to and interventions in bioethics that feminist disability studies is uniquely situated to make.

Call for Papers: WCPA in Edmonton, October 2008

Call for Papers, Western Canadian Philosophical Association
2008 Annual Meeting, Edmonton, hosted by the University of Alberta
October 24-26th 2008 (Friday pm until Sun lunch)

Keynote Speaker: Stephen Darwall, Yale University

Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2008
Website: http://www.ualberta.ca/~wcpa08

Details from conference organizers beneath the fold. Of special relevance for What Sorters are two things: our network team will be running a pre-conference workshop on the Friday (the conference usually starts around 6pm), including talks from the Finnish bioethicist Simo Vehmas and others still be arranged, and have also arranged with the conference organizers to hold a special stream during part of the conference on What Sorts themes. If you have something to submit as part of the regular conference, or are interested in attending the pre-conference workshop, contact me directly before the submission deadline. If there are enough What Sorts submissions that we know of in advance, we may look at extending the number of sessions we plan to have on What Sorts themes at the conference.

What Sort of Art? Steve Kurtz and BioArt

Steven Kurtz, an art professor at the State University of New York at Buffola, is one of the current practitioners of BioArt, which uses living matter as an art medium. He gained special media attention by being the focus of a bioterrorism investigation 2004-2008. In May 2004, police responded to an emergency call by Kurtz (his wife had died due to heart failure), and got suspicious about the laboratory equipment in his home. Kurtz used this equipment to prepare a performance (“Free Range Grain“), which allowed participants to test food for the presence of genetically modified organisms. He was temporarily arrested, being suspected for bioterrorism (which nowadays in the US carries prison sentence for up to 20 years). These charges were soon turned into mail and wire fraud charges, because of – in fact harmless – bacteria that University of Pittsburgh geneticist Robert Ferrell had sent to Kurtz. This April, Kurtz was cleared from all charges. (Ferrell was coerced to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and fined.)

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble. Check out their BioArt projects reflecting on modern genetics, biotechnology, and reproduction, such as Flesh Machine, Society for Reproductive Anachronisms, Cult of the New Eve, and GenTerra. Some of Kurtz’s BioArt work touches upon war and military research: project Marching Plague involved throwing benign bacteria at guinea pigs, referencing a British military experiment. The recent installation Immolation shows the effects of incendiary weapons on human skin samples.

There is also a recent interview with Kurtz on the bioterrorism investigation. And here we see him conducting a subversive and dangerous art performance:

 

Reductionism in Biology: SEP entry and discussion thread

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Reductionism in Biology, co-authored by Alan Love and myself, has been published online. Section 5 mentions pluralism and ideas from feminist and social epistomology bearing on reductionism. Some of you may have views on this (e.g., on issues that we did not mention in our brief discussion). We set up a discussion thread on this SEP entry, to gather comments that we will consider when revising the entry in the future. Feel free to comment on our entry there!