Hey! I'm Catherine, or Cat, Cathy
—anything you'd like. I'm a sophomore majoring in psychology and (hopefully) biology. I love, love, love science, and if I were any good at math, I'd enter the field of robotics, cybernetics, things of the sort. I'm a huge feminist geek with a love for science-fiction, particularly Isaac Asimov's robot series, and sometimes I'll even write a story or two of my own. Feminism is important to me exactly because of my love for science
—there is a pervasive stereotype in the West that women are not science majors, that they cannot be science-fiction lovers. We are creatures of emotion, and science has no time or patience for the weak-minded, right? (Not so, said Rosalind Franklin, whose work predated the findings of nobel prize winners Watson and Crick.) It is for this reason
—this stereotype
—that art and art history are also important to me. The lives of women artists mirror the lives of women scientists. Both have gone unrecognized and unappreciated, and the artists and scientists mentioned in texts
—fictional or otherwise
—have almost always been men.
Below is an artist's interpretation of the fictional Dr. Susan Calvin and Herbie from Isaac Asimov's
Liar!, one of the few short stories in science-fiction to feature a well-written, non-objectified female character.
To wrap up, in the beginning of the course, we tried naming 5 women artists. Can you now try naming 5 women scientists? See the link below for help!
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Ten-Historic-Female-Scientists-You-Should-Know.html
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