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Converges the fields of childhood studies and the histories of science, medicine, and technology, foregrounding and investigating the entangled histories of the "child" and childhood and science.

Building on the premise that neither childhood nor science are natural, essential, or universalizable entities, this Osiris volume examines the interrelation of these two categories, tracing back to the Middle Ages and up until the present. Organized around three major themes—theorizing and historicizing the category of childhood and child agency, the technologies and politics of child health, and the co-constitutive relationship between the concept of the child and childhood and the realm of science—the issue traverses time, space, cultures, bodies, and disciplines. The contributions explore the role that science, technology, and medicine played in constructing how the ideology of childhood shaped ideas about scientific thinking and practices, e.g., the psy-sciences, sexology, filmology, medicine, health technology; and how the entanglement between the “child” and science influenced the formation of national identity, selfhood, colonial rule, resistance, and the notions of “progress” and the “future.” Using the “child” as an analytical category and considering children as fully-fledged historical actors allows us to retell and re-present (the history of) science through a wide range of sources, and in turn, reimagine our understandings of agency, governance, subjectivity, human nature, and what science owes the “child” and children.

A philosophical analysis of three scientific visions of humanity: the noosphere, the Anthropocene, and Gaia theory.

How can we explain humanity’s unique relationship to the Earth? In Our Planetary Mirror, cultural theorist Boris Shoshitaishvili considers the three major forms of thought Earth scientists have posited in recent years: the noosphere (humans as a layer of thought and culture covering the Earth), the Anthropocene (humans as a geological force), and Gaia theory (humans as part of a superorganism comprising life on Earth). 

To explore how these concepts extend beyond contemporary science, Shoshitaishvili traces the metaphors at the heart of each framework through their ancient predecessors, including Babylonian myth, Greek philosophy, Aztec metaphysics, and medieval European theology. Using this approach, Shoshitaishvili develops fresh responses to pressing global issues such as geoengineering, artificial intelligence, and the balance between cosmopolitanism and a world of intensified nationalism.

When Christa Kuljian arrived on the Harvard College campus as a first-year student in the fall of 1980 with copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms. magazine, she was concerned that the women’s movement had peaked in the previous decade. She soon learned, however, that there was a long way to go in terms of achieving equality for women and that social movements would continue to be a critical force in society. She began researching the history of science and gender biases in science, and how they intersect with race, class, and sexuality.

In Our Science, Ourselves, Kuljian tells the origin story of feminist science studies by focusing on the life histories of six key figures—Ruth Hubbard, Rita Arditti, Evelyn Fox Keller, Evelynn Hammonds, Anne Fausto-Sterling, and Banu Subramaniam. These women were part of a trailblazing network of female scientists in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s who were drawn to the Boston area—to Harvard, MIT, and other universities—to study science, to network with other scientists, or to take a job. Inspired by the social and political activism of the women’s movement and organizations such as Science for the People, the Genes and Gender Collective, and the Combahee River Collective, they began to write and teach about women in science, gender and science, and sexist and racist bias and exclusion. They would lead the critiques of E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology in 1975 and Larry Summers’ comments about women in science thirty years later. The book also explores how these contributions differed from those of Nancy Hopkins’, author of the 1999 MIT report on women in science, and a “reluctant feminist.”

Drawing on a rich array of sources that combines published journal articles and books with archival materials and interviews with major luminaries of feminist science studies, Kuljian chronicles and celebrates the contributions that these women have made to our collective scientific knowledge and view of the world.

An eyewitness account of this controversial environmental action.

Construction plans for the reroute of Highway 55 through south Minneapolis sparked an environmental movement that pitted activists against public authorities in one of the most dramatic episodes in the city’s history. Mary Losure was there; as a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio she witnessed the neighborhood’s transformation from a quiet street to the center of an emotionally charged standoff. Fueled by idealism and anger, a diverse coalition banded together to try to stop the highway expansion. Beginning in 1998, this group sustained protests for more than one year and eventually faced an unprecedented show of force by law enforcement.

Winner of the American Sociological Association’s Section on the Sociology of Sexualities Distinguished Book Award

Over the past 50 years, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer professionals have organized to achieve greater inclusion into the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This inclusion, however, has come at a cost. In the 1970s, these professionals sought to radically transform STEM fields by confronting the homophobia and sexism embedded within them. Instead, these fields became more corporatized and privatized, and STEM institutions and workspaces—particularly in the spheres of government and business—became dominated by a focus on individualism, self-improvement/advancement, and meritocracy, which are hallmarks of neoliberalism. For many LGBTQ STEM professionals, inclusion now required becoming more apolitical, pro-capital, and focused on professional development.

In Out Doing Science, Tom Waidzunas, Ethan Czuy Levine, and Brandon Fairchild explore this transformation of LGBTQ STEM professionals from oppositional outsiders to assimilationist insiders. Drawing on historical archives, oral interviews, and participant observation of professional societies and workspaces, the authors interrogate the meanings of “inclusion” and why some LGBTQ STEM professionals have benefited from it more than others. They also advocate for a “queer STEM” that challenges and transforms the racism, classism, sexism, cisheterosexism, and imperialism of these fields, institutions, and workspaces. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Out Doing Science will appeal to readers interested in LGBTQ studies, and science and technology studies, as well as anyone who wants to create a more diverse and inclusive work environment.

WINNER OF THE LILLIAN SMITH BOOK AWARD

The story of faith, sacrifice, and moral courage in Alabama's fight for civil rights.

Outside Agitator tells the powerful, largely forgotten story of Jonathan Daniels—a white Episcopal seminarian from New England who answered the call of the civil rights movement and paid for that commitment with his life. In 1965, Daniels left the safety of Harvard and Cambridge for Selma and Alabama’s Black Belt, where he worked alongside Black activists to challenge segregation, register voters, and confront the moral failures of church and state. His murder by a white segregationist shocked the nation and exposed the deadly cost of racial injustice—and of moral courage. 

More than a biography, this book asks urgent questions that still resonate: What does it mean to act on conscience in a society structured by inequality? What responsibilities do faith, citizenship, and privilege impose? Historian Charles W. Eagles places Daniels’s life within the turbulent final phase of the southern civil rights movement, revealing the everyday fears, ethical dilemmas, and racial tensions behind the iconic events of Selma and Lowndes County. 

Outside Agitator will appeal to readers interested in civil rights history, religious activism, Southern history, and the moral dimensions of political struggle. It is essential reading for students, scholars, clergy, and general readers seeking to understand how individual lives can illuminate—and challenge—the ongoing fight for justice and equality.