Northwestern Events Calendar

May
1
2023

Anthony Ryan Hatch - “Metabolism Cages for New World Animals, Small and Large”

When: Monday, May 1, 2023
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM CT

Where: University Hall, Hagstrum 201, 1897 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Cost: FREE

Contact: Janet Hundrieser   (847) 491-3525

Group: Science in Human Culture Program - Klopsteg Lecture Series

Category: Lectures & Meetings

Description:

Speaker

Anthony Ryan Hatch, Weslyan University

Title

“Metabolism Cages for New World Animals, Small and Large”

Abstract

In the mid-19th century, metabolism cages emerged as key experimental infrastructures in biochemistry and animal studies used to capture, control, and isolate the metabolic processes unfolding within a subject’s body. By placing new world animals in a metabolism cage (rodents, dogs, primates, humans, races), precisely controlling their food and water intake, and monitoring and analyzing their biowaste, researchers developed new scientific knowledge about how bodies and environments interact—metabolism cages allowed researchers to open the black box of metabolism. These new metabolic truths formed the basis of new forms of political governance, scientific norms, and cultural practices all of which transform the matter of/in bodies across species. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical race STS and animal studies, this talk explores the design history of metabolism cages as carceral technologies that became part of a broader scheme to establish metabolic dominance over multispecies life. This lecture describes ongoing intellectual and creative collaborations with student researchers and artists in Black Box Labs at Wesleyan University in which we deconstruct black boxes (like metabolism cages) by analyzing the power relationships that shape science and technology. 

Biography

Anthony Ryan Hatch, Ph.D., is a sociologist and Professor of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University where is he is also affiliated faculty in the Department of African American Studies, the College of the Environment, and the Department of Sociology. He is the author of Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America (Minnesota, 2019) and Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America (Minnesota, 2016). He recently appeared in the PBS documentary Blood Sugar Rising and lectures widely on health systems, medical technology, and social inequalities. He is a co-lead in the Sydney Center for Healthy Societies, a member of the Health and Social Equities Hub at King’s College London, and is a fellow in The Hastings Center. Dr. Hatch received the 2022 Robin W. Williams Distinguished Lectureship Award from the Eastern Sociological Society. He earned his A.B. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland at College Park. 

 

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