Jun 9 2025
On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America from Starvation to Ozempic (2025; UC Press) is a timely and compelling contribution to Science and Technology Studies (STS) and History of Science (HOS). Extending common threads woven throughout their prior work on vital minimums, Dr. Dana Simmons addresses an enduring pattern in United States history: the production of hunger. This book traces the production of hunger throughout the nineteenth to the present, articulating the ways in which hunger is c...
Nov 4 2024
What does our growing obsession with shit and bodily leakage tell us about being modern, enlightened, and objective? Can we think without the dialectic of the sphincter, that alternation between containment and discharge, sovereignty and submission?
Sep 30 2024
While today feminist science studies and STS are often considered inseparable, Daiwie Fu examines their once tumultuous relationship. In this post, he offers a brief review of the convergence between feminist studies and STS.
Jun 12 2023
In this post, Hannah Star Rogers invites the readers into the growing space of art and STS exhibitions in her review of the show "Picturing the Invisible" curated by Makaoto Takahashi.
Jun 27 2022
In this post, David Kananizadeh reflects on decolonizing STS and what Souleymane Bachir Diagne's book "The Ink of the Scholars" might contribute to this debate.
Jan 3 2022
This post captures the previous year of Backchannels’ publications covered as a curation of lists.
Mar 15 2021
When was the last time you were aware you interacted with algorithm? The politics of visibility and invisibility profoundly shape our social lives in ways we are likely unaware of. “Coded Bias” (2020) is a documentary directed by Shalini Kantayya surfacing the vast yet invisible role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the production of racialized and gendered social control.
Jan 18 2021
How do you make and communicate your research is the leading question of "Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research" edited by Kat Jungnickel. In the book, researchers from a broad range of disciplines present their critical tactics of turning experimental research into unconventional formats and why that matters.
Oct 17 2020
In this re-blog, Keerthana Balaji reviews the documentary Seeds of Freedom (2012). This review can help STS scholars reflect on how agricultural research systems shape/are shaped by power and patent regimes that promote some technologies but lock out other socio-ecological innovations.
May 18 2020
The research output landscape in Africa and its complexities is central to the book titled The Next Generation of Scientists in Africa. Drawing on historical data and rich empirical work, (interviews, bibliometric analyses, and web-survey) it delves into the complex and precarious nature of scholarship in Africa by investigating how African scientists navigate murky waters inherent there and the impact of these obstacles on research productivity. It is a book that tells the story of scientific r...