Monday, November 30, 2020, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

Deboleena Roy, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies



“Biophilosophies of Becoming”



"Should feminists clone?" "What do neurons think about?" "How can we learn from bacterial writing?" These and other provocative questions have long preoccupied neuroscientist, molecular biologist, and intrepid feminist theorist Deboleena Roy, who takes seriously the capabilities of lab "objects" – bacteria and other human, nonhuman, organic, and inorganic actants – in order to understand processes of becoming that have typically been ignored or purposely not addressed. In her talk “Biophilosophies of Becoming,” Roy investigates science as feminism at the lab bench, engaging in interdisciplinary conversations among molecular biology, Deleuzian philosophies, posthumanism, and postcolonial and decolonial studies that can create new social orders through horizontal social movements. She brings insights from feminist theory together with lessons learned from bacteria, subcloning, and synthetic biology, arguing that renewed interest in matter and materiality must be accompanied by a feminist rethinking of scientific research methods and techniques.