The Pandemicene Podcast aims to produce knowledge that can help all of us – scholars and scientists, students and activists – imagine and enact just futures both in our home state of California and in our communities worldwide.
Airing on KZSC Santa Cruz 88.1 FM, on Sunday, December 6th, 6:30 – 7 pm PST.
Link to the live stream, or listen below after the episode airs.
Welcome to the Pandemicene Podcast. Today we welcome you to a conversation with Martha Kenney, recorded on September 22nd, 2020. Dr. Kenney is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at San Francisco State University, and an interdisciplinary scholar in the science, technology, and society hub there. In this conversation, we touch on many topics, from the fables of individualism that have dominated popular discourse around the COVID-19 pandemic, to the importance of media literacy, to the role that speculative fiction can play in processing our current reality and opening space up to imagine new worlds. Our conversation begins with Dr. Kenney telling us about how she has guided her attention throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and how she has responded thus far.
Interviewer Bio:
Paloma Medina is a scientist and artist based in Santa Cruz, CA. Paloma holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Scripps College and is currently a Ph.D. student in Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz.
Guest Bios:
Martha Kenney (Ph.D. History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz) is an Associate Professor in the Women and Gender Studies department at San Francisco State University. She is a feminist science studies scholar whose research explores the poetics and politics of biological storytelling. Her current project examines and intervenes in the narratives emerging from the new field of environmental epigenetics, which studies how signals from the environment affect gene expression. Specifically, she looks at how assumptions about gender, race, class and sexuality influence the design of epigenetic experiments on model organisms and how we understand the relationship between bodies and environments. She has recent and forthcoming articles in Social Studies of Science, Science as Culture, Biosocieties and Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Dr. Kenney teaches courses on the politics of science, technology, medicine and the environment.
Works Cited in Interview:
Penkler, Michael; Ruth Müller; Martha Kenney; and Mark Hanson. “Back to normal? Building community resilience after COVID-19.” The Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology. August 2020.