Joan Roughgarden

2011-12 Colloquium on New Directions in Gender and Sexuality Studies

Evolution of Social Behavior: Not the 1970's Anymore

The now-classical picture of social evolution from the 1960-70's relied on two hypotheses: 1. Competition for mates with good genes followed by parental-offspring and parent-parent conflict of interest explains the evolution of family organization. 2. Some mix of kin selection, group selection, and reciprocal altruism explains the evolution of altruism and cooperation.  This picture has been dissolving in light of continuing empirical and theoretical discoveries. New approaches to the evolution of cooperation and family life are offered by the notion of pleasure-based biological ``teamwork'', and by the notion of an incentive-structured biological ``firm'' for producing offspring. How evolutionary biology regroups to assimilate new approaches will determine whether it prospers or ossifies during the foreseeable future.

DATE: October 5, 2011

TIME: 4 to 6 pm

PLACE: Royce 314

ORGANIZED BY: Department of Women's Studies 

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Since its emergence in the 1970s from feminist, gay, and lesbian social movements, Women's Studies  has had an enormous influence on a number of disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences as well as such diverse fields as medicine, biology, law, global, and performance studies. This yearlong forum is to showcase cutting-edge scholarship as well as to demonstrate the wide range of disciplines and systems of knowledge for which gender and/or sexuality provides a critical lens or conceptual framework. What kinds of contributions can traditional disciplines make to transdisciplinary fields like women's, LGBT, and gender studies and conversely, how are the transdisciplinary fields transforming disciplinary knowledge? How can we conceptualize gender and sexuality studies in terms of multiple sites of intersecting but irreducible methods and practices? What are the theories that address the full range and complexities of gender roles and sexual identities in different cultural settings, geographical sites, and historical moments? This forum has invited internationally renown scholars to present their most recent work and to engage these and other questions with the UCLA community. 

Supported with a grant from the Division of Social Sciences and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and cosponsorship of Department of Anthropology, Center for Society and Genetics, Center for the Study of Women, Department of English, School of Law, LGBT Studies, Mellon Postdoctoral Program in the Humanities, Williams Institute, and Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance .

Joan Roughgarden has taught at Stanford University since 1972. She founded and directed the Earth Systems Program at Stanford. Roughgarden's current research links ecology with economic theory. Her books include Evolution's Rainbow (2004), The Genial Gene (2009) and Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist.