Episode Details

In this episode we chat to Michelle N. Huang, Assistant Professor of English and Asian American literature at Northwestern University. Chatting with Michelle is bittersweet, as we think collectively together about anti-Asian racism and how it intersects with histories and representations of technological development in the context of intensified violence against Asian American and Asian diaspora communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss why the humanities really matter when thinking about technology and the sciences, Michelle’s amazing film essay Inhuman Figures which examines and subverts racist tropes and stereotypes about Asian Americans; why the central idea of looking at what's been discarded, devalued, and finding different values and ways of doing things defines the power of feminist science studies; and what it means to think about race on a molecular level.