World Renowned Feminist Theorist to Speak at UH Manoa

Donna Haraway Presents a Look at the Relationship Between Humans and Animals as Part of The Distinguished Lecture Series

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Posted: Nov 26, 2002

Donna Haraway, considered to be one of the most important feminist theorists in the world, will present a lecture based on her forthcoming book entitled "The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness" on December 2, 2002, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. The lecture, part of the UH Mānoa Distinguished Lecture Series, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Ballroom and is free and open to the public.

Her lecture parallels her current research adopting a figure that emerges in the conditions of technoculture: dogs as companion species. She is interested in how humans and animals interface.

In addition to her public lecture, Haraway will also be conducting a seminar at UH Mānoa in Kuykendall Hall 410 on Wednesday, December 4, at 3:30 p.m. entitled "From Cyborgs to Companion Species: Kinship in Technoscience." The seminar will look at how human information machine relationships, like the computer, are like and unlike their canine-human counterparts. Haraway will draw from stories of dog and human co-evolution, health and canine genetics activism, space-traveling pooches, and practices with modern working and sports dogs, setting the stage for a "Companion Species Manifesto."

A former UH Mānoa Women‘s Studies professor, Haraway‘s innovative thinking has crossed many boundaries and has brought together a multitude of diverse literatures and perspectives.
She has lectured extensively on cyberculture, relations of biology and anthropology, feminist and anti-racist perspectives on science and technology, and historically situated animal-human worlds.

Haraway‘s numerous publications have transformed the humanities and social sciences. Long intrigued by the scientific and cultural meanings of animals in contemporary worlds, she has written about free-ranging monkeys and apes, genetically engineered laboratory mice, colonial invertebrates, and, now, dogs. Her book "Primate Visions" demonstrates her interdisciplinary talent as it combines literary theory, political philosophy, primatology, and American history to explore the world of primatology. Literary critic Hayden White called "Primate Visions" a "brilliant demonstration of the analytical power of radical feminist perspectives on cultural history.

She has also written two other widely cited and highly influential articles — "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," initially published in Socialist Review, and "Situated Knowledge," first published in Feminist Studies — both of which are said to have revolutionized feminist theory.

Widely influencing cultural studies, women‘s studies, political theory, primatology, literature, and philosophy, Haraway‘s background is remarkably interdisciplinary. Her undergraduate studies include work in zoology, philosophy and English. She holds a PhD in Biology from Yale University and has spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in Paris studying philosophies of evolution.

Haraway went on from UH Mānoa to Johns Hopkins University, and now teaches at the influential History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In September 2000, Haraway was presented with the J.D. Bernal Award, the highest honor given by the Society for Social Studies of Science that recognizes individuals for lifetime contributions to the field.