Date:
Location:
“'Climate Change Creates Female Super-Race': Male Extinction, Endangered Turtles & Coral Reef Collapse"
Attend this event via Zoom (advance registration required)
Speaker:
Meg Perret, PhD candidate, History of Science and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Harvard University.
Contact:
Paul Sherman
paul_sherman@hks.harvard.edu
Co-sponsored by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
This event is online only. Please click the "Read More" link for full instructions on how to attend this seminar.
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Remote Access Information:
To join by computer:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduDex5bm5Oa9lp6z30zBOKxcodi171rmBi-rF6BQH-h681LA/viewform
Please note: This event requires registration by noon on Friday, October 23 to receive the meeting link and password.
Abstract:
I confront two case studies of scientific representations of the inextricability of the future of biodiversity and our own species. First, I argue that cultural and scientific depictions of global warming rely on a gendered metonymy that reduces the complexity of the threat of climate change to the possibility of a feminized future through “male extinction.” In doing so, I examine the rhetorical devices shared by climate fiction films that focus on the impact of climate change on human reproduction—such as 2019 film Annihilation—and scientific research on endangered sea turtles, which argues that global warming could cause extinction by skewing the sex ratio of turtle hatchlings toward a “female dominant” population. I further illuminate the rhetorical connections among this research, social scientific studies that argue that climate change could harm male fetuses, and political discourses of “white extinction anxiety.” Second, I contrast these representations with an emerging research in “extinction biology” on the alarming loss of the coral reef ecosystem through ocean acidification which describes the threat of climate change as “chains of extinction” or “extinction cascades.”
Speaker Bio:
Meg Perret is a PhD candidate in history of science and women, gender & sexuality studies at Harvard University. She is a recipient of the presidential scholarship, which recognizes the top admitted graduate students at Harvard for their leadership and innovation potential in both public policy and academia. Her dissertation, The Future is Species-Queer: Race, Gender & Sexuality in the Sciences of the Biodiversity Crisis examines the rhetoric, metaphor, and images that scientists use to conceptualize and depict their research on species extinctions. She has worked on several interdisciplinary collaborative projects between feminist scholars and scientists including the Harvard GenderSci lab which generates feminist concepts for scientific research on sex, gender, and sexuality. She works with the climate justice organization, Our Climate Voices, where she leads their program on intersectional feminism. She graduated with highest honors from UC Berkeley as a triple major in Integrative Biology; Gender and Women’s Studies; and Interdisciplinary Studies: Science, Technology & Society.
