New Criticals

Alondra Nelson teaches sociology and gender studies at Columbia University. An interdisciplinary social scientist, she writes about the intersections of science, technology, medicine, and inequality. She is author of Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota, 2011). She is also an editor of Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (Rutgers, 2012), Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life (NYU, 2001) and “Afrofuturism,” a special issue of Social Text (2002).Her publications also include articles on race and digital culture; “scientism” in black power politics; the use of racial categories in medicine; and the social implications of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, genetic genealogy and social media. Visit her website at www.alondranelson.com

Here are Alondra's first five...

"My first daily media date is with a current writing project via Dropbox (used with a text editing app). I can access Dropbox from any of my devices--whatever is close at hand, from smartphone to desktop computer—so I never have an excuse for not writing. Most days this involves putting the final touches on my book, “The Social Life of DNA,” which will be published by Beacon Press in 2014. Today, I revised a section of the book, wrote up my First 5, and drafted some notes for a new project on African American women in the sciences."

"I then turn to Twitter as a reward for having started my day with writing. I follow about 1500 people with a widely ranging standpoints, political orientations, and personal obsessions. It is my most favorite social media site by far because it is equal parts news, politics, scholarship, and amusement."

"I read an international newspaper or magazine each day, usually alternating daily between der Speigel, The Guardian, articles on Le Monde in English, Al Jazeera or Haaretz. Today, I read a piercing interview with Judith Butler on the precarity of human life under late capitalism and how we can mobilize against dehumanization and a new review of the late Manning Marable’s important book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention on the francophone/English site Books & Ideas."

"My research deals with the social implications of science and medicine, so I try to stay up to date with the big news in these areas. I regularly read Genomeweb, the Wired Science blogs, and the Scientific American blogs. I also follow tech blogger Shareef Jackson. Today I checked out the latest posts on the Center for Genetics and Society’s “Biopolitical Times” blog, which is a progressive, critical counterpoint to the corporate perspective that is predominant in a good deal of science writing."

"I watched a recent episode of Left of Black, a webcast on African American arts and letters hosted by the phenomenal Duke University professor, Mark Anthony Neal. This one featured a conversation about black nerds."

Thumbnail image was provided by Alondra.