About Karen Barad

Office: Humanities 1 Rm 330

Research Interests

Feminist science studies, materialism, deconstruction, poststructuralism, posthumanism, multi-species studies, science & justice, physics, twentieth-century continental philosophy, epistemology, ontology, ethics, philosophy of physics, feminist, queer, & trans theories

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Theoretical Particle Physics, SUNY Stony Brook

Karen Barad is Professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy, and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Barad's Ph.D. is in theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory. Barad held a tenured appointment in a physics department before moving into more interdisciplinary spaces. Barad is the author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007) and numerous articles in the fields of physics, philosophy, science studies, poststructuralist theory, and feminist theory. Barad's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hughes Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Barad is the Co-Director of the Science & Justice Graduate Training Program at UCSC. http://www.cbse.ucsc.edu/education/science_justice

Selected Publications

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007

What is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice / Was ist das Maß des Nichts? Unendlichkeit, Virtualität, Gerechtigkeit, dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken | Book Nº099 (English & German edition, 2012).

K. Barad. 2015. Verschränkungen. [Translation: Entanglement], collected essays in German, translation by Jen Theodore, including a new interview with the translator Jen Theodore. Berlin: Merve Publishing.

"Diffracting Diffractions: Cutting Together-Apart," in Parallax, Special Issue on “Diffracting Worlds, Diffractive Readings – Onto-Epistemologies and the Critical Humanities,” ed. by Kathrin Thiele and Brigit Kaiser, v. 20(3): 168-187, 2014.

“Invertebrate Visions: Diffractions of a Brittlestar,” in The Multispecies Salon, ed. by Eben Kirksey, Duke University Press, pp. 221-241, 2014.

“TransMaterialities: Trans*/Matter/Realities and Queer Political Imaginings,” GLQ, Special Issue on “Queer Inhumanisms,” edited by Mel Chen & Dana Luciano, 21:2-3, 387-422, 2015.

Verschränkungen. [Translation: Entanglement], collected essays of Karen Barad, in German, translation by Jen Theodore, including a new interview with the translator Jen Theodore. Berlin: Merve Publishing, 2015.

"On Touching -- The Inhuman That Therefore I Am," in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, v.23(3): 206-223, 2012.

"Nature's Queer Performativity (the authorized version)," in Kvinder, Køn og forskning/ Women, Gender and Research (Copenhagen, 2012), No. 1-2, pp. 25-53.

Interview of Karen Barad by Adam Kleinmann, in Special dOCUMENTA (13) Issue of Mousse Magazine (Milan, Italy), Summer 2012.

“Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come,” in Derrida Today (Nov 2010), vol. 3, no. 2 : pp. 240-268, edited by Nicole Anderson and Peter Steves, 2010

"Erasers and Erasures: Pinch's Unfortunate 'Uncertainty Principle'," in Social Studies of Science, vol. 41, no. 3, Spring 2011

“Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 28, no. 3, Spring 2003

“Re(con)figuring Space, Time, and Matter,” in Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice, edited by Marianne DeKoven. New Brunswick: Rutgers U. Press, 2001

“Reconceiving Scientific Literacy as Agential Literacy, or Learning How to Intra-act Responsibly Within the World,” in Doing Culture + Science, ed. by Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek. NY: Routledge, 2000

“Agential Realism: Feminist Interventions in Understanding Scientific Practices,” in The Science Studies Reader, edited by Mario Biagioli. NY: Routledge Press, 1998.

“Meeting the Universe Halfway: Realism and Social Constructivism Without Contradiction,” in Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science, edited by Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Press, 1996

“A Feminist Approach to Teaching Quantum Physics,” in Teaching the Majority: Breaking the Gender Barrier in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering, edited by Sue V. Rosser. NY: Athene Series, Teacher’s College Press, 1995

“Complementarity: Dichotomies in Perspective,” in The Barnard Occasional Papers, Vol. IV, No.1, 1989

“A Quantum Epistemology And Its Impact On Our Understanding of Scientific Process,” in The Barnard Occasional Papers, Vol. III No.1, 1988

“Quark-Antiquark Charge Distributions and Confinement,” in Physical Letters 143B, 222, K. Barad, M. Ogilvie, C. Rebbi, 1984

“Minimal Lattice Theory of Fermions,” in Physical Review D30, 1305, 1984

Artistic Work

An Artistic/Computer Animation Work: “Quarkland,” 3D computer animations of the physics of elementary particles for a CD-interactive version of Stephen Hawking’s best seller, A Brief History of Time. 1994

Courses Taught

80K/30. Feminism and Science

100. Feminist Theories

133. Science and the Body

194D. Feminist Science Studies (senior seminar)

214. Topics in Feminist Science Studies (different theme each offering)

268A. Science & Justice: Experiments in Collaboration (for the Science & Justice Training Program)

268B. Science & Justice: Experiments in Methods (for the Science & Justice Training Program)