Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives

Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives PDF Author: Venla Oikkonen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136200177
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, evolutionary psychology has produced widely popular visions of modern men and women as driven by their prehistoric genes. In Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives, Venla Oikkonen explores the rhetorical appeal of evolutionary psychology by viewing it as part of the Darwinian narrative tradition. Refusing to start from the position of dismissing evolutionary psychology as reactionary or scientifically invalid, the book examines evolutionary psychologists’ investments in such contested concepts as teleology and variation. The book traces the emergence of evolutionary psychological narratives of gender, sexuality and reproduction, encompassing: Charles Darwin’s understanding of transformation and sexual difference Edward O. Wilson’s evolutionary mythology and the evolution-creationism controversy Richard Dawkins’ molecular agency and new imaging technologies the connections between adultery, infertility and homosexuality in adaptationist thought. Through popular, literary and scientific texts, the book identifies both the imaginative potential and the structural weaknesses in evolutionary narratives, opening them up for feminist and queer revision. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the humanities and social sciences, particularly in gender studies, cultural studies, literature, sexualities, and science and technology studies.

Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives

Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives PDF Author: Venla Oikkonen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136200177
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, evolutionary psychology has produced widely popular visions of modern men and women as driven by their prehistoric genes. In Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives, Venla Oikkonen explores the rhetorical appeal of evolutionary psychology by viewing it as part of the Darwinian narrative tradition. Refusing to start from the position of dismissing evolutionary psychology as reactionary or scientifically invalid, the book examines evolutionary psychologists’ investments in such contested concepts as teleology and variation. The book traces the emergence of evolutionary psychological narratives of gender, sexuality and reproduction, encompassing: Charles Darwin’s understanding of transformation and sexual difference Edward O. Wilson’s evolutionary mythology and the evolution-creationism controversy Richard Dawkins’ molecular agency and new imaging technologies the connections between adultery, infertility and homosexuality in adaptationist thought. Through popular, literary and scientific texts, the book identifies both the imaginative potential and the structural weaknesses in evolutionary narratives, opening them up for feminist and queer revision. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the humanities and social sciences, particularly in gender studies, cultural studies, literature, sexualities, and science and technology studies.

Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives

Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives PDF Author: Venla Oikkonen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Evolutionary psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description


Population Genetics and Belonging

Population Genetics and Belonging PDF Author: Venla Oikkonen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 331962881X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book explores how human population genetics has emerged as a means of imagining and enacting belonging in contemporary society. Venla Oikkonen approaches population genetics as an evolving set of technological, material, narrative and affective practices, arguing that these practices are engaged in multiple forms of belonging that are often mutually contradictory. Considering scientific, popular and fictional texts, with several carefully selected case studies spanning three decades, the author traces shifts in the affective, material and gendered preconditions of population genetic visions of belonging. Topics encompass the debate about Mitochondrial Eve, ancient human DNA, temporality and nostalgia, commercial genetic ancestry tests, and tensions between continental and national genetic inheritance. The book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of science and technology studies, cultural studies, sociology, and gender studies.

The Evolution of Human Sexuality

The Evolution of Human Sexuality PDF Author: Donald Symons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199878471
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Anthropology, Sexual Studies, Psychology, Sociology, Gender and Cultural Studies

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic

The Evolutions of Modernist Epic PDF Author: Václav Paris
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192638653
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Modernist epic is more interesting and more diverse than we have supposed. As a radical form of national fiction it appeared in many parts of the world in the early twentieth century. Reading a selection of works from the United States, England, Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and Brazil, The Evolutions of Modernist Epic develops a comparative theory of this genre and its global development. That development was, it argues, bound up with new ideas about biological evolution. During the first decades of the twentieth century--a period known, in the history of evolutionary science, as 'the eclipse of Darwinism'--evolution's significance was questioned, rethought, and ultimately confined to the Neo-Darwinist discourse with which we are familiar today. Epic fiction participated in, and was shaped by, this shift. Drawing on queer forms of sexuality to cultivate anti-heroic and non-progressive modes of telling national stories, the genre contested reductive and reactionary forms of social Darwinism. The book describes how, in doing so, the genre asks us to revisit our assumptions about ethnolinguistics and organic nationalism. It also models how the history of evolutionary thought can provide a new basis for comparing diverse modernisms and their peculiar nativisms.

Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection

Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection PDF Author: Evelleen Richards
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022643690X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 704

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Book Description
Sexual selection, or the struggle for mates, was of considerable strategic importance to Darwin s theory of evolution as he first outlined it in the "Origin of Species," and later, in the "Descent of Man," it took on a much wider role. There, Darwin s exhaustive elaboration of sexual selection throughout the animal kingdom was directed to substantiating his view that human racial and sexual differences, not just physical differences but certain mental and moral differences, had evolved primarily through the action of sexual selection. It was the culmination of a lifetime of intellectual effort and commitment. Yet even though he argued its validity with a great array of critics, sexual selection went into abeyance with Darwin s death, not to be revived until late in the twentieth century, and even today it remains a controversial theory. In unfurling the history of sexual selection, Evelleen Richards brings to vivid life Darwin the man, not the myth, and the social and intellectual roots of his theory building."

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics PDF Author: Alison Bashford
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195373146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 607

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Book Description
Philippa Levine is the Mary Helen Thompson Centennial Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire, and The British Empire, Sunrise to Sunset. --

Gender, Sexuality and Museums

Gender, Sexuality and Museums PDF Author: Amy K. Levin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136943641
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Gender, Sexuality and Museums provides the only repository of key articles, new essays and case studies for the important area of gender and sexuality in museums. It is the first reader to focus on LGBT issues and museums, and the first reader in nearly 15 years to collect articles which focus on women and museums. At last, students of museum studies, women’s studies, LGBT studies and museum professionals have a single resource. The book is organised into three thematic parts, each with its own introduction. Sections focus on women in museum work, applications of feminist and LGBT theories to museum exhibitions, exhibitions and collections pertaining to women and individuals who are LGBT. The Case studies in a fourth part provide different perspectives to key topics, such as memorials and memorializing; modernism and museums; and natural history collections. The collection concludes with a bibliographic essay evaluating scholarship to date on gender and sexuality in museums. Amy K. Levin brings together outstanding articles published in the past as well as new essays. The collection’s scope is international, with articles about US, Canadian, and European institutions. Gender, Sexuality and Museums: A Routledge Reader is an essential resource for those studying gender and sexuality in the museum.

How We Do It

How We Do It PDF Author: Robert Martin
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 0465030157
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
A primatologist explores the mystery of the origins of human reproduction, explaining that understanding the evolutionary past can provide insight into what worked, what didn't, and what it all means for the future of mankind.

The Genial Gene

The Genial Gene PDF Author: Joan Roughgarden
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520258266
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Explores evidence that suggests whether selfishness and individuality are subjective biological traits, examining social behaviors that relate to sex, gender, and family, and discussing an alternative evolutionary theory called "social selection" that focuses on cooperation.