University of Chicago Press
Performance All the Way Down: Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference
Key Metrics
- Richard O Prum
- University of Chicago Press
- Paperback
- 9780226829784
- -
- -
- Social Science > Gender Studies
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
The idea that gender is a performance--a tenet of queer feminist theory since the nineties--has spread from college classrooms to popular culture. This transformative concept has sparked reappraisals of social expectations as well as debate over not just gender, but sex: what it is, what it means, and how we know it. Most scientific and biomedical research over the past seventy years has assumed and reinforced a binary concept of biological sex, though some scientists point out that male and female are just two outcomes in a world rich in sexual diversity.
In Performance All the Way Down, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard O. Prum brings feminist thought into conversation with biology, arguing that the sexual binary is not essential to human genes, chromosomes, or embryos. Our genomes are not blueprints, algorithms, or recipes for the physical representation of our individual sexual essences or fates. In accessible language, Prum shows that when we look closely at the science, we see that gene expression is a material action in the world, a performance through which the individual regulates and achieves its own becoming. A fertilized zygote matures into an organism with tissues and organs, neurological control, immune defenses, psychological mechanisms, and gender and sexual behavior through a performative continuum. This complex hierarchy of self-enactment reflects the evolved agency of individual genes, molecules, cells, and tissues.
Rejecting the notion of an intractable divide between the humanities and the sciences, Prum proves that the contributions of queer and feminist theorists can help scientists understand the human body in new ways, yielding key insights into genetics, developmental biology, physiology. Sure to inspire discussion, Performance All the Way Down is a book about biology for feminists, a book about feminist theory for biologists, and a book for anyone curious about how our sexual bodies grow.
Author Bio
I am an evolutionary ornithologist with broad interests in avian biology. I have done research on diverse topics, including avian phylogenetics, behavioral evolution, feather evolution and development, sexual selection and mate choice, sexual conflict, aesthetic evolution, avian color vision, structural color, carotenoid pigmentation, evolution of avian plumage coloration, historical biogeography, avian mimicry, and the theropod dinosaur origin of birds. For more details see my Research pages.
I have conducted field work throughout the Neotropics and in Madagascar, and have studied fossil theropods in China.
At Yale, I am the Curator of Ornithology and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. I have previously served as Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (2008-2011).
From 2012-2017, I was the Director of Franke Program in Science and the Humanities (http://www.yale.edu/whc/frankeprogram.html), which is an initiative at Yale that aims to foster communication, mutual understanding, collaborative research and teaching among diverse scientific and humanistic disciplines. The Franke Program sponsored lectures, events, workshops, and courses that span the major traditional division of the university. It is made possible by the generosity of Richard (‘53) and Barbara Franke.
Education
- Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. A.B. Cum Laude in Biology, 1982.
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ph.D. in Biological Sciences, 1989.
Source: Yale University - Prum Lab
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