History and Sociology of Science
Monday workshop
Monday, October 23, 2023 - 3:30pm
392 Cohen Hall
Hubert Goodale’s Feminized Cockerels: Industrial Chicken Breeding, Sex Control, and the Queer and Trans Ecologies of Endocrinology
Early endocrinology engaged animal bodies as important sites to study sexual development and plasticity. This lecture explores the role of livestock animals in early experimental endocrinology, in particular, by focusing on the work of the early twentieth century poultry geneticist, Dr. Hubert Goodale. It foregrounds the political economic and ecological context of industrial chicken farming that mobilized his work. More broadly, the lecture shows the importance of multispecies and ecological approaches to histories of sex, gender, and sexuality, and it discloses the animating and pervasive powers of affect, fantasy, and desire within the applied life sciences and the broader food system.