February 13-16, 2008, Albuquerque, NM, Southwest conference of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association

We are now accepting abstracts of scholarly papers dealing with the complex relationships between culture, on one hand, and science, medicine, and technology, on the other.

Papers should wrestle with one or some of the notions below, and do not necessarily have to deal with Southwestern culture in particular.

-- the meanings and functions of science in modern life
-- the politics of scientific knowledge production
-- the relationship between science and society
-- the ethics of scientific technology and its use
-- the social construction of technology
-- the status of the body in medical discourse
-- the conflicts between science and religion in popular culture
-- the differences between Western and Asian medical traditions
-- issues related to health care systems and policies
-- issues related to the pharmaceutical industry
-- issues related to subjectivity and disease
-- issues related to the study of race, class, gender, and/or sexuality in science and technology studies
-- bioterrorism, biotechnologies, and genetically modified organisms
-- cyborgs and cyberculture
-- narratives of illness
-- representations of science and medicine in literature, film, or television (ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, etc.)
-- arguments referencing the work of Kuhn, LaTour, Haraway, Fleck, Merton, Polanyi, or similar theorists

Abstracts of about 300-500 words should be sent in the text of an email or as an attached Word document to Dr. Lynn Marie Houston at lmhouston@csuchico.edu by November 15, 2007. Include in your email a brief biography of yourself in which you state major degrees, university positions, and teaching/research interests; or, if you are a graduate student, note the major courses you have taken in this area and your paper’s relationship to your graduate program of study.