This event is part of the Atmospheric Apparitions mini-symposium on Sept 18-19 2025. It is is free and open to the public. We encourage you to visit the departmental Atmospheric Apparitions: Particle Pollutants – Dust, Ash, Smog and Smoke! exhibition in the Liu Lobby Gallery on view from July 21-Sept 26, 2025.
Photo credit: Julie C. Walker
Photo credit: Julie C. WalkerSpeaker:
Dr. Melina Packer (University of Wisconsin–La Crosse)
Title:
Toxicant Masculinity: Chemical Gaslighting for the Undoable Science of Toxicology
Abstract:
Melina Packer will share the political motivations for and core arguments from her book Toxic Sexual Politics, a queer feminist historiography of U.S. toxicology. Based upon in-depth interviews and extensive ethnographic and archival research, including participant observations in toxicology classrooms, conferences, and laboratories, Toxic Sexual Politics urges toxicologists and public health advocates to situate toxicant science within its masculinist, militarist, and eugenicist history. Packer further argues that toxicology will not protect the planet from pollution until and unless this science explicitly confronts chemical corporate power, following the lead of queer, feminist, anti-ableist, and antiracist movements for environmental justice.
Bio:
Melina Packer is Assistant Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, on Ho-Chunk Nation land. She received her PhD in Society and Environment, with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, from the University of California, Berkeley, on the unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone. Her research interests include queer feminist and anticolonial science and technology studies, antiracist animal studies, critical public health, and environmental justice. She is author of Toxic Sexual Politics: Toxicology, Environmental Poisons, and Queer Feminist Futures (NYU Press 2025) and co-author of Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior (MIT Press 2025).
Respondent:
Estraven Lupino Smith, PhD Candidate, UBC Geography
This is an in person event hosted in room 229 Geography.
