Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL
STS seminar Series 2010-11
Term 2
All seminars take place at 5.00pm in room G.03
22, Gordon Square -UCL
Monday 28 March
Frederick Attenborough, Loughborough University
‘Sci-candy’ and the ‘femme fatale of physics’: The media, gender and the
‘sexy scientist’
Previous studies of the media’s portrayal of male and female scientists
couched their analyses in terms of the ‘big story’ of gender
stereotyping: men tended to get represented as scientists who just
happened to be men, whereas women tended to get represented as women
first, and scientists second. But in this presentation, a big(ger) story
is introduced into the study of representations of scientists in the
media: sexualisation. In an era in which sex has been openly admitted
into the sphere of public talk and discourse, what has happened to those
representations? Have gender stereotypes been inflected in such a way as
to increase the likelihood that images of male scientists will be just
as sexualised as those of female scientists? And what might be the
consequences of such a representational shift for the public
understanding of science? Working through a discursive analysis of UK
national newspaper articles that feature Brian Cox and Laura Grant – two
media-friendly scientists – the paper will engage with precisely such
questions.
Forthcoming seminars:
Monday 11 April
Prof. Steve Miller (STS, UCL)
Maunakea: cultural encounters, boundaries and [mis] understandings
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Dr. Chiara Ambrosio
Teaching Fellow in Philosophy of Science
Department of Science and Technology Studies
University College London
Tel. (office) +44 02076792846
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/fellows/ambrosio/index.htm
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