An Introduction to Scientific Masculinities

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The article is copyrighted by the History of Science Society and published by the University of Chicago Press. It can be found at: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/osiris/current.This volume seeks to integrate gender analysis into the global history of science and\ud medicine from the late Middle Ages to the present by focusing on masculinity, the\ud part of the gender equation that has received the least attention from scholars. The\ud premise of the volume is that social constructions of masculinity function simultaneously\ud as foils for femininity and as methods of differentiating between “kinds”\ud of men. In exploring scientific masculinities without taking the dominance of men\ud and masculinity in the sciences for granted, we ask, What is masculinity and how\ud does it operate in science? Our answers remind us that gender is at once an analytical\ud category and a historical object. The essays are divided into three sections that\ud in turn emphasize the importance of gender to the professionalization of scientific,\ud technological, and medical practices, the spaces in which such labor is performed,\ud and the ways that sex, gender, and sexual orientation are measured and serve as\ud metaphors in society and culture