Dawn Smith-Sherwood, Department of Foreign Languages (Spanish) recently published A Laboratory of Her Own: Women and Science in Spanish Culture (Vanderbilt University Press 2021) with co-editors Victoria Ketz (LaSalle University, Philadelphia) and Debra Faszer-McMahon (Seton Hill University, Greensburg).

From VUP: "A Laboratory of Her Own gathers diverse voices to address women's interaction with STEM fields in the context of Spanish cultural production. This volume focuses on the many ways the arts and humanities provide avenues for deepening the conversation about how women have been involved in, excluded from, and represented within the scientific realm.

"While women's historic exclusion from STEM fields has been receiving increased scrutiny worldwide, women within the Spanish context have been perhaps even more peripheral given the complex socio-cultural structures emanating from gender norms and political ideologies dominant in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain. Nonetheless, Spanish female cultural producers have long been engaged with science and technology, as expressed in literature, art, film, and other genres. Spanish arts and letters offer diverse representations of the relationships between women, gender, sexuality, race, and STEM fields.

"A Laboratory of Her Own studies representations of a diverse range of Spanish women and scientific cultural products from the late nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. STEM topics include the environment, biodiversity, temporal and spatial theories, medicine and reproductive rights, neuroscience, robotics, artificial intelligence, and quantum physics. These scientific themes and other issues are analyzed in narratives, paintings, poetry, photographs, science fiction, medical literature, translation, newswriting, film, and other forms."

From Mary Wyer, editor of Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies: "This is a careful, cogent, fascinating, and well-researched collection of essays about the cultural, historical, and political contexts in which artists and authors interrogated STEM and gender themes in Spain. A groundbreaking collection."