Imagine a garden; now imagine the seemingly innocuous language you might use to select suitable plantings. In Community Ecologies, three transdisciplinary scholars of biology and feminist science studies will discuss their collaborative theoretical and experimental work on "invasive species." Banu Subramaniam (Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies, UMass-Amherst), Peggy Schultz (Biology Outreach, Indiana), and James Bever (Biology, Indiana) will ask how certain plant and animal species come to be seen as invasive – and thus foreign – and how this terminology parallels language around humans and migration. How might experiments on soil/plant interactions speak to xenophobia? How does invasion biology relate to community ecology? And, what does it mean to do ecology as a critically and politically engaged scientist? The speakers discuss their deeply interdisciplinary and collaborative research, and its compelling implications for close ties between feminist science studies, transnational feminisms, and biology/ecology.

This lecture is part of IRWG's Program in Feminist Science Studies.