Humanities Department Celebrates Women's History Month with a Look at Women in Science
The Department of Humanities welcomed Dr. Kimberly Hamlin, an Associate Professor of American Studies and History at Miami University Ohio, as its featured speaker at the department’s annual Women’s History Month Luncheon and Presentation. The event took place Monday in the MTCC Ballroom.
Hamlin presented on her research from her book, From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America. Her talk centered on the role of science in 19th century women’s rights debates, and was shared with the audience in the form of a “top 10” list.
The biggest takeaway? You can be both a feminist and an evolutionist, according to Hamlin.
“As a result of some of the historical ways that evolutionary theory has been interpreted (including more recently in the controversial fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology), there is a perception among many that somehow feminism and evolutionary theory are at odds,” Hamlin says. “My research illuminates a time when women saw evolutionary theory as inherently feminist.”
From Eve to Evolution provides a pre-history of women in science, showing women’s engagement in the practice of science, as well as their enthusiasm for the subject, in the late 19th century.
“Previous accounts of women and science in the 19th century have focused on how science was used against women, which was certainly the case, and my book shifts the focus to look at how women used science,” Hamlin says.
Hamlin’s research produced two main findings: one, that the progress of women and science go “hand in hand,” Hamlin says; and two, that “both science and women are better off when more women participate in science.”
The book also examines how many women used evolutionary theory to support arguments that still occur today regarding reproductive anatomy and fair distribution of domestic labor.
Hamlin says her book originated as her PhD dissertation.
“My starting question was: what did women’s rights activists think about evolutionary theory?” she says. “And I was promoted to ask that question based on the centrality of Eve in 19th century pro and con women’s rights arguments. So I wondered if women were drawn to evolutionary theory because it gave them another way to think about gender difference and human origins.”
“My book was partly confirming that, yes, women were drawn to evolutionary theory as an alternative to the Genesis creation story, and then delineating the specific ways in which women used evolution theory for feminist purposes.”
Now, Hamlin is at work on a biography of Helen Hamilton Gardener, a feminist who donated her brain to science in 1925 to prove women’s brains were not inferior to men’s.
“She also played a vital role in the passage of the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote, and was a fixture in the women’s rights movement from the 1880s to 1925,” Hamlin says. “I hope to tell the larger story of first wave feminism through her eyes.”
Co-sponsoring the luncheon and presentation were IIT's College of Science, Lewis College of Human Sciences, Department of Physics, and Department of Psychology.
