2010 Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecturer Announced
Contact: Judy Round, round@maine.edu or (207) 581-5104
Note: a photo of Michelle Murphy is available upon request
ORONO — The University of Maine Geddes W. Simpson Lecture Committee has selected Michelle Murphy, associate professor of history and the Institute of Women Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, to present that annual lecture.
The title of Murphy’s lecture is “Avertable Life, Investable Futures: A Cold War Story of Sex and Economy.” It is scheduled for Maine Day, Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 3 p.m. in Buchanan Alumni House’s McIntire Room. The public is welcome.
The series was established in 2001 by the family of Geddes Wilson Simpson, a well-respected faculty member who began his career at UMaine in 1931, to bring to UMaine speakers of prominence who have significant insight into the area where science and
history intersect.
Murphy’s work examines the history of technoscience, sex, gender, race, environmental politics and capitalism in the United States .
Her book “Sick Building Syndrome and the Politics of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience and Women Workers “(Duke University Press, 2006) won the 2008 Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science. She is also the
author of “Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Feminism, Technoscience, and the Biopolitics of Cold War America” (Duke University Press, forthcoming) and co-editor of “Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments” (Osiris,
2004).
Her current research project, “The Economization of Life,” explores the interlinked histories of efforts to govern and alter national economies and human biological futures. She is also a 2009-2010 Jackman Humanities Institute Research Fellow.