Where Women Scientists Belong: Placing Feminist Memory in Biography Collections for Children

Abstract

For decades, feminists have observed a double bind in commemorations of women who attempt to enter male-designated places: Women must simultaneously be honored as rightfully occupying those places and yet noted as worthy of unique commendation as women. This essay examines how these challenges are negotiated rhetorically in biography collections about women scientists produced for children and adolescents. We perform a rhetorical analysis of such collections to explore how they complicate demarcations of what counts as science and who counts as a scientist. While these collections challenge gendered assumptions, many also reinforce divisions between men and women in order to celebrate the unique achievements of women scientists. Combining scholarship on feminist public memory and tropes in the rhetoric of science, we argue that the biography collection creators rely upon placial topoi, both metaphorical and literal, to recover and celebrate women scientists in the scientific canon and in public memory.