Clare C. Jen
Dr. Clare Jen holds a joint appointment in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Department of Biology at Denison University. She previously served as elected co-chair of the Science & Technology Taskforce of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA), and as a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Women’s Studies at University of Maryland-College Park.
The interdisciplinarity of her work is of relevance to women’s and gender studies, critical race and ethnic studies (specifically Asian American Studies), and feminist studies of science, technology, and health. Methodologically, she qualitatively analyzes visual and written texts—primarily news media, popular science and health media, and government and academic publications—as representational and constitutive of phenomena.
Besides teaching the introductory course and advising senior research in women’s and gender studies, she teaches feminist methodologies, feminist “practices” in the biological sciences, and feminist studies of science, technology and society. In the Department of Biology, she teaches an introductory biology course, with a weekly laboratory component, that couples and melds the epistemologies, methodologies, and methods of both disciplines.
Learning & Teaching
- BIO105/WGST254 Menstruation Studies: Biology, Health, and Justice
- BIOL110/WGST110 Biology and Politics of Women’s Health
- WGST110/QS290 Issues in Feminism
- WGST290 Feminist Science Studies
- WGST310 Feminist Research Methods
- WGST350/QS268 Feminist Health Politics
- WGST451/WGST452 Senior Research
- AC101 Advising Circle
Research
Works
Articles and Book Chapters:
Jen, Clare. “Laborastories: Methodological and Pedagogical Enactments of a Multispecies Care Praxis,” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies (Special Issue on Ethics in Multispecies Research), eds. Heather Rosenfeld and Lauren van Patter. [under review]
Jen, Clare. “Our Pandemic Conditions,” Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review, No. 245 (Special Issue on Pandemics), ed. Danielle Wong, 20-26. University of British Columbia-Vancouver, November 2021.
Jen, Clare. “Oppositional Scientific Praxis: The “Do” and “Doing” of #CRISPRbabies and DIY Hormone Biohacking.” Chapter in Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, Second Ed., eds. L.Ayu Saraswati, Barbara Shaw and Heather Rellihan, 465-469. Oxford University Press, November 2020.
Jen, Clare. “Feminist Hacktivisms: Countering Technophilia and Fictional Promises.” Chapter in Introduction to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, eds. L.Ayu Saraswati, Barbara Shaw and Heather Rellihan. Oxford University Press, December 2018.
Jen, Clare. 2015. “Do-It-Yourself Biology, Garage Biology, and Kitchen Science: A Feminist Analysis of Bio-Making Narratives.” Chapter in Knowing New Biotechnologies: Social Aspects of Technological Convergence, eds. Eugenia Rodrigues and Matthias Wienroth, 125-141. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Genomics Network Series. Routledge: New York.
Jen, Clare. 2014. “Feminist Technoscience Activism: A Double-Stranded Reading of Dr. Bodnar’s Ig Nobel Striptease.” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Issue 26. http://www.rhizomes.net/issue26/jen.html
Jen, Clare. 2013. “How to Survive Contagion, Disease and Disaster: ‘Masked Asian/American Woman’ as Low-Tech Specter of Emergency Preparedness.” Feminist Formations 25, no. 2:107-128.
Jen, Clare. 2013/2011. “The Possibilities of Asian American Citizenship: A Critical Race and Gender Analysis.” Ethnic Studies Review 34, nos. 1&2:157-183.
Book Review:
Jen, Clare. 2015. Book Review. Review of Ghost Stories for Darwin: The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity, by Banu Subramaniam. Asian Biotechnology Development Review 17, no. 1:63-68.
Service
National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)
Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
The Association for Feminist Epistemologies, Methodologies, Metaphysics and Science Studies (FEMMSS)
Other
Doctoral Graduate Award, American Association of University Women (AAUW)-College Park, MD, 2009.
Dissertation Fellowship, Consortium for Race, Gender and Ethnicity, University of Maryland College Park, 2007-2008.
Evie Beck Research Prize Award, Department of Women’s Studies, University of Maryland-College Park, 2006.
- Zoe Loitz, “Embodied Experiences and Analysis of Denison University Accessibility” (2020-21, WGST)
- Maddie McKenney-Lydick, “Beyond Accessibility: Utilizing Disability Pedagogy to Reimagine the Classroom” (2019-20, WGST)
- Jessica Leeds Richman, “Feminist Scientific and Medical Research Surrounding Women’s Chronic Pain and Illness” (2019-20, WGST)
- Dana Phillips, “Resisting Respectability: Zines as Discursive Sites of Liberatory Queer Deviance” (Spring 2020 secondary reader, WGST)
- Samantha Cortez, “More Than Participants: Examining the Legislative Impact of Congresswomen from 1992 and 2012” (Spring 2019, WGST, secondary reader)
- Kirsten Elmer, “Writing as Remedy: The Social and Political Connotations of the Female Body” (2016-17, WGST)
- Audrey Vasquez, “‘Making the Body’: An Analysis of Gendered Hormones,” (2016-17, WGST)
- Isabel Tumminello, “The Sociology of Childbirth in the United States of America,” (2016-17, ANSO, secondary reader)
- Rachel Auerbach, “Ecuadoran Women Rose Workers: A Feminist Analysis of Consent, Labor, and Chemical Exposure” (2015-16, WGST/ENVS)
- Shakia Asamoah, “Pinked Consciousness: The Ribbon Movement and Breast Cancer” (2013-14, WGST)
- Loan Nguyen, “Strong Women, Small Businesses” (2013-14, WGST/ANSO, co-advised with Dr. Anita Waters)
- Gabriel Cunine, “The Pregnant Boy” (Spring 2014, WGST)
- Marissa Lease, “Facebook vs. Fakebook: The Digital Formation of Teenage Girldom” (2012-13, WGST)
- Elise Schultz, “Plant(hood) Matters: Epistemology of Plant Sex/Gender Dimorphism” (2011-12, WGST, co-advised with Dr. Andrew McCall)
- Eva Rediker, “Evolution and Sex: A Feminist Analysis of Behavior in the Animal Kingdom and its Social Construction in the Popular Press” (2011-12, WGST)
- Donyea Moore, “The Science of ‘Good Skin’: A Feminist Analysis of ‘Beauty,’ Identity, and ‘Health’ in Biomedical and Popular Media Discourses” (Spring 2011, WGST)
