A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture PDF
Preview A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture
A Laboratory of Her Own A Laboratory of Her Own Women and Science in Spanish Culture Edited by Victoria L. Ketz, Dawn Smith-SherwooD, anD Debr a FaSzer-mcmahon VanDerbiLt UniVerSity PreSS Nashville Copyright 2021Vanderbilt University Press All rights reserved First printing 2021 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ketz, Victoria L., editor. | Smith-Sherwood, Dawn, 1968– editor. | Faszer-McMahon, Debra, 1974– editor. Title: A laboratory of her own : women and science in Spanish culture / edited by Victoria L. Ketz, Dawn Smith-Sherwood, and Debra Faszer-McMahon. Description: Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020034108 (print) | LCCN 2020034109 (ebook) | ISBN 9780826501288 (paperback) | ISBN 9780826501295 (hardback) | ISBN 9780826501301 (epub) | ISBN 9780826501318 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Women in science—Spain. | Women in science—Spain—History. | Women in science—Social aspects—Spain. Classification: LCC Q130 .L33 2020 (print) | LCC Q130 (ebook) | DDC 500.82/0946—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034108 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034109 For young women (y las chicas raras) everywhere, that they might be welcomed into and challenged by both the STEM fields and the arts Contents Acknowledgments ix Foreword by Roberta Johnson xiii Introduction. The Story of Women and STEM in Spanish Culture 1 Victoria L. Ketz, Dawn Smith-Sherwood, and Debra Faszer-McMahon Part I. On rOle MOdels: FeMale scIentIsts and sPanIsh letters 1. Las chicas raras de STEM: Recuperating #WomensPlace in Spanish Literary and Scientific Histories 33 Dawn Smith-Sherwood 2. “The Doctor Is In”: Elena Arnedo Soriano (1941–2015), Women’s Health, and the Cultural History of Gender and Medicine in Spain 52 Silvia Bermúdez 3. Gender and the Critique of “Ascientific Traditions”: Science as Text and Intertext in Rosa Montero’s La ridícula idea de no volver a verte 70 Ellen Mayock 4. From la santidad de la escoba to la trinidad higiénica: Rosario de Acuña (1851–1923) and a More Inclusive Vision of Spain’s Public Health 89 Erika M. Sutherland 5. Science, History, and Gender: An Interview with María Jesús Santesmases 119 Victoria L. Ketz and Debra Faszer-McMahon Part II. On ste(a)M: IntegratIng scIentIFIc InquIry IntO the cultural realM 6. Science in the Works of Clara Janés: A Poetics of Theoretical (Meta)physics 141 Debra Faszer-McMahon 7. An Extension of Sympathy: Science and Posthumanism in the Paintings of Remedios Varo 166 Marta del Pozo Ortea viii contentS 8. Subversive, Combative, Corrective: Carmen de Burgos’s Interventionist Translation of Möbius’s Öber den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes (The mental inferiority of women) 187 Leslie Anne Merced 9. Contrasting Images of Women Scientists in the Early Postwar Period (1940–1945) and the Novel María Elena, ingeniero de caminos by Mercedes Ballesteros 207 Miguel Soler Gallo 10. Unorthodox Theories and Beings: Science, Technology, and Women in the Narratives of Rosa Montero 235 Maryanne L. Leone Part III. On gender: usIng steM tO crItIque gendered rOles 11. Biotech, Barceló, Bustelo: Reproduction, Motherhood, and Gendered Hierarchies in Spanish Science Fiction 265 Mirla González 12. Challenging Boundaries of Time, Science, and Gender: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in Marina Mayoral’s “Admirados colegas” 291 Victoria L. Ketz 13. Technological Portrayals: Framing Fernandinas in the Colonial Context through Photography and Press during the Spanish Second Republic 315 Inés Plasencia 14. Punishing Narratives: The Challenges of Gender and Scientific Authority in Spanish Science Fiction Film 350 Raquel Vega-Durán Appendix. List of Works by Genre Addressed in This Volume 371 Contributors 379 Index 385 Acknowledgments Many of our female colleagues, including two of this collection’s editors, initially focused on the sciences in their educational formation, only to abandon this line of inquiry to pursue a career in the humanities. While humanistic pursuits have provided us with fascinating and fulfilling work, this pattern of shifting disciplinary focus sparked an interest in exploring the factors dissuading many of our female colleagues from STEM fields. While such patterns have been shifting over time, the power of academic structures and gender norms still seems to hold strong sway, and we see this in our own classrooms and with our female students. As our collec- tion demonstrates, women in science, in Spain and worldwide, have faced pervasive and systematic discrimination that has affected their interac- tions with STEM fields. Yet our story is one of hope, experimentation, and interdisciplinarity. Spanish female cultural producers have insisted since at least the nineteenth century on connecting science and art, and we have attempted to honor their work and their passion for interdisci- plinary STE(A)M endeavors throughout this volume. The rejection of disciplinary silos and the importance of diverse per- spectives is the focus of Banu Subramaniam’s Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity.1 She offers intriguing examples of how women scientists might challenge the boundaries of established scientific research in order to connect with humanistic pursuits. Her own personal story echoes “la mirada tuerta” posited by Peninsular novelist and journalist Montserrat Roig. In the preface, subtitled “On Interdisci- plinarity,” Subramaniam describes the challenges of looking in both direc- ix
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