This book challenges law’s reliance on neurology’s brain-sex binary. The brain has become the latest candidate in a historical search for a reliable and fixed biological marker of ‘true sex’ that has permeated every aspect of Western culture, including law. As definitions of the sexed and gendered body have become ever more contentious, the development and dissemination of brain-sex theories have come to dominate popular understanding of LGBTI+ identities. But, this book argues, the brain is no more helpful than earlier biological measures in ensuring just outcomes. Examining how law determines and differentiates ‘male’ and ‘female’ in two contested areas of sexed identity –through a discussion of Australian cases authorising medical interventions to alter the embodied sex characteristics of transgender minors and intersex minors –the book demonstrates an incoherence in the legal understanding of gender identity development. As the brain too fails as a convincing biological anchor for the binary sex categories of male and female, law must, it is argued, retreat from its aspiration to create, define, and regulate artificially bounded sex categories of male and female. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students in a range of disciplines who are working at the intersection of law, gender, and sexuality.

A compelling history of popular phrenology in the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of the nineteenth-century Tasman World.

This open access book illustrates how interdisciplinary research develops over the lifetime of a scholar: not in a single project, but as an attitude that trickles down, or spirals up, into research. This book presents how interdisciplinary work has inspired shifts in how the contributors read, value concepts, critically combine methods, cope with knowledge hierarchies, write in style, and collaborate. Drawing on extensive examples from the humanities and social sciences, the editors and chapter authors show how they started, tried to open up, dealt with inconsistencies, had to adapt, and ultimately learned and grew as researchers. The book offers valuable insights into the conditions and complexities present for interdisciplinary research to be successful in an academic setting. This is an open access book.

The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science is a comprehensive resource for feminist thinking about and in the sciences. Its 33 chapters were written exclusively for this Handbook by a group of leading international philosophers as well as scholars in gender studies, women’s studies, psychology, economics, and political science. The chapters of the Handbook are organized into four main parts: I. Hidden Figures and Historical Critique II. Theoretical Frameworks III. Key Concepts and Issues IV. Feminist Philosophy of Science in Practice. The chapters in this extensive, fourth part examine the relevance of feminist philosophical thought for a range of scientific and professional disciplines, including biology and biomedical sciences; psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience; the social sciences; physics; and public policy. The Handbook gives a snapshot of the current state of feminist philosophy of science, allowing students and other newcomers to get up to speed quickly in the subfield and providing a handy reference for many different kinds of researchers.

The past 20 years have seen increasingly bold claims emanating from the field of neuroscience. Advances in medical imaging, brain modelling, and interdisciplinary cognitive science have forced us to reconsider the nature of social, cultural, and political activities. This collection of essays is the first to explore the relationship between neuroscience and political theory, with a view to examining what connections can be made and which claims represent a bridge too far. The book is divided into three parts: Part I: places neuroscience as a social and political practice into historical context Part II: weaves together the insights from contemporary neuroscience with the wisdom of major figures in the history of political thought Part III: considers how neuroscience can inform contemporary debates about a range of issues in political theory This work brings together scholars who are sceptical about the possibility of integrating neuroscience and political theory with proponents of a neuroscience-informed approach to thinking about political and social life. The result is a timely and wide-ranging collection of essays about the role that our brain might play in the life of the body politic. It should be essential reading for all those with an interest in the cutting edge of political theory.

Philosophy has long puzzled over the relation between mind and brain. This volume presents some of the state-of-the-art reflections on philosophical efforts to 'make sense' of neuroscience, as regards issue including neuroaesthetics, brain science and the law, neurofeminism, embodiment, race, memory and pain.

Sex and gender in biomedicine are innovative research concepts of theoretical and clinical medicine that enable a better understanding of health and disease, evidence-based knowledge, effective therapies, and better health outcomes for women and men. Gender Medicine stimulates new ways of doing research: that is to consider sex and gender at all levels of research, from basic research into gene polymorphisms to health behaviour. New research questions have been put forward that focus not on differences per se but on the development of differences. In this book, contributions from the field of neuroscience, addiction research, and organ transplantation exemplify concepts, approaches, methods and results in the field.

Sentient animals, machines, and robots abound in German literature and culture, but there has been surprisingly limited scholarship on non-human life forms in German studies. This volume extends interdisciplinary research in emotion studies to examine non-humans and the affective relationships between humans and non-humans in modern German cultural history. In recent years, fascination with emotions, developments in robotics, and the burgeoning of animal studies in and beyond the academy have given rise to questions about the nature of humanity. Using sources from the life sciences, literature, visual art, poetry, philosophy, and photography, this collection interrogates not animal or machine emotions per se, but rather uses animals and machines as lenses through which to investigate human emotions and the affective entanglements between humans and non-humans. The COVID-19 pandemic made us more keenly aware of the importance of both animals and new technologies in our daily lives, and this volume ultimately sheds light on the centrality of non-humans in the human emotional world and the possibilities that relationships with non-humans offer for enriching that world. Watch our talk with the editors Erika Quinn and Holly Yanacek here: https://youtu.be/RBMwXah_Om8