Gender and the Human Genome

Project Description
Sponsored by a Mellon Foundation Grant through the Five Colleges, this Summer Research Program engages junior and senior faculty and undergraduates in an exciting study of new research on gender and the human genome. Tracking emerging questions in sex and gender difference in human genomic research, Summer Research Program students, working alongside faculty, will help formulate the set of questions that will structure a long-term collaborative and interdisciplinary project, the “Genes and Gender Initiative,” in the Five Colleges. Student research assistants will help to lay the foundations for this effort by (1) analyzing the implications of the sequencing of the human genome for our understanding of human sex and gender difference; (2) working to map the methods, aims, and empirical claims of this new area of research; and (3) framing the relevant social and ethical questions raised by this research.

Faculty Researchers
Sarah S. Richardson is Five College Assistant Professor of Feminist Science Studies. She is a historian and philosopher of science whose research focuses on race and gender in the biosciences and on the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. She has broad interests and expertise in history and philosophy of molecular biology/genetics, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and feminist science studies. Richardson co-edited the book Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (Rutgers, 2008) and her forthcoming book, a history of human sex chromosome genetics, is titled Sex Itself: Male and Female in the Human Genome (under review).

Jennifer Hamilton is Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Anthropology and Director of the Law Program at Hampshire College. She is a cultural anthropologist who is centrally interested in how ideas of difference shape institutional forms, and how they influence individual and social subjectivities. In particular, her work centers on the question why and how, and to what effect, human difference—including understandings of race, gender, ethnicity, ancestry, genetic variation, and population—has come to occupy a central place in our current understandings of law, ethics, and biomedicine. She is the author of Indigeneity in the Courtroom: Law, Culture, and the Production of Difference in North American Courts (Routledge 2009). During 2010-2011, she will be a Research Associate at the Five College Women's Studies Research Center.

Laura L. Lovett is Associate Professor of History at UMass Amherst. Her research interests concern gender, race and the family in twentieth century America. She published Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction and the Family in the United States, 1890-1930, with the University of North Carolina Press in 2007. She is currently engaged in research on two projects: one on the role of gender in the Scopes Trial and another on the rise of non-sexist early childhood education. From 2008 to 2011, she will be the Director of the Five College Women's Studies Research Center. She is also the co-editor of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth.

Student Researchers
Kendra Bechtel is a Hampshire College student about to enter her Division III. She is interested in bioethics, health policy, and neuroscience. She is very interested in working with both geriatric populations and young people with terminal illness, and is planning on studying the ways in which we communicate about dying and death in the United States during her last year at Hampshire. She has previously worked in Joshua Greene's Moral Cognition Lab at Harvard University, and for the Center for Ethical Solutions on their "Making End of Life Decisions Count" project and has written for their publication, "Legal Trends in Bioethics". Her non-academic interests include everything to do with food, and she is an avid amateur baker and cook.



Emily Georges will be a Senior Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Biology double major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a socially aware student with 3 years of lab and research experience. She is excited to contribute her knowledge and background in these areas to the Gender and the Human Genome Project. In her free time, Emily enjoys coffee runs, spending time outdoors, driving and listening to music, running and reading.

Michele Kuhnle is a graduating senior from Mount Holyoke College. A Critical Social Thought major, she has been deeply engaged in a year-long thesis project that investigates the social impacts of genetically modified crops and is committed to combining science and social critique. Dedicated to democratizing scientific knowledge, she is interested in making science accessible to a wide audience and examining the many implications it has on everyday life. In April 2010 she will give a talk entitled "Seeds of Discontent: The Effects of Genetically Modified Crops on Food, Farms, and Our Future" at Mount Holyoke College. In her spare time Michele enjoys Pilates and reading mystery novels.



Jamie Moody graduated from Hampshire College, completing her senior work in "Geneticization and its implications for health and healthcare." She is a certified EMT-B for Massachusetts, and co-directed Hampshire College's EMS. Her academic interests include medical sociology, genetics, and U.S. healthcare reform. She also enjoys hiking, swimming, biking and dancing to old R&amp;B. Jamie plans to pursue a career engaging patients in improving healthcare.

Sean Nunley graduated in 2010 from Hampshire College, studying behavioral biology, evolution, and neuroscience. His thesis consisted of laboratory research examining the evolutionary origins of domestication and the neuroendocrinology of behavioral tameness in domestic animals. The results of this study as well as a separate review of paper on the topic of covariation of animal morphology,behavior, and hormones systems are currently in the process of revision with the intention of scholarly publication. Sean’s many academic and research interests include behavioral biology and psychology; evolution; behavioral economics; the neuroscience of language; the interactions of genes, development and environment in the production of phenotype; emergent social phenomena; and the application of empirical brain science to issues of law, commerce, and public policy.

Sarah Schear is a rising junior at Amherst College where she is majoring in Anthropology and completing pre-medical coursework. She is particularly interested in Medical Anthropology, global health disparities, and illness experience. Within the physical sciences, Sarah has most enjoyed studying Organic Chemistry, Molecular and Gene Biology, and Neuroscience. In addition to Anthropology and health, Sarah is passionate about dance. She has trained in modern, jazz, and West African styles, and plans to keep dance as a central activity and inspiration in her life and—eventually—in her work. Sarah is delighted to be working with the 5-College Gender and Genome Initiative to formulate and investigate questions of how biomedical technologies impact sociocultural understandings of gender and the body. Sarah will be abroad this Fall studying Hindi, Anthropology and Kathak Dance in Varanasi, India.