FPR-UCLA Sex/Gender Conference Planning Workshop

UCLA
Los Angeles, California
Saturday, March 1, 2014 (9-4 pm)

The purpose of this workshop is to plan for the sixth interdisciplinary conference jointly hosted by the FPR and UCLA, which will explore the biological, social, and cultural bases of sex/gender differences, bringing together experts from anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, and related fields.

Recent advances in the biological sciences are challenging the “classic model” of sex determination and sexual differentiation (variations based on chromosomal complement, gonadal hormones, reproductive organs), the fixedness of binary sex categories, and the brain as sexually homogeneous.

Complementing neuroscientific research on sexual determination/differentiation and gender as nonlinear and dynamic are ethnographic accounts of widespread variation – gender pluralism and transgenderism, the “third sex,” and other alternatives to gender polarity – sensitive to culture and context, based on the lived experience and perspectives of persons across the globe.

In light of these developments, the  conference aims to examine changes in our understandings of sex and gender; to critically evaluate their effects outside the laboratory; and to propose novel investigations and conceptual frameworks that could better integrate culture and biology.

List of Participants

Art Arnold, PhD, Director, Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Brain Research Institute, UCLA

Tom Boellstorff, PhD, Professor, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine

Carole Browner, PhD, Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA; FPR Board Member

Erica Cartmill, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA

Marie-Françoise Chesselet, MD, PhD, Charles H. Markham Professor of Neurology; Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology, UCLA; FPR Board Member

Gilbert Herdt, PhD, Professor and Founder, Graduate Program in Human Sexuality, California Institute for Integral Studies

Douglas Hollan, PhD, Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA; Co-Director, FPR-UCLA CBDMH Program; FPR Board Member

Marjorie Kagawa-Singer, PhD, MA, MN, RN, FAAN, Professor, UCLA School of Public Health and Department of Asian American Studies; FPR Board Member

Marvin Karno, MD, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA; FPR Board Member

Robert Lemelson, PhD, Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA; President, The Foundation for Psychocultural Research

Steve López, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology, USC; Co-Director, FPR-UCLA Culture, Brain, Development, and Mental Health program; FPR Board Member

Bill Maurer, PhD, Dean, School of Social Sciences, UC Irvine

Emeran A. Mayer, MD, PhD, Director, Gail and Geral Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress; Director, Center for Neurovisceral Sciences & Women’s Health; Co-Founder, Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine, UCLA

Beate Ritz, MD, PhD, Chair, Department of Epidemiology, UCLA; FPR Board Member

Alice Wexler, PhD, Research Scholar, Center for the Study of Women, UCLA

Carol M. Worthman, PhD, Director, Laboratory for Comparative Human Biology; Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology, Emory University