A mediatrix is a woman who mediates ideas, translating them across spheres to promote understanding, order, and unity. Mediatrixes have long played a crucial social role as science and technology communicators. As a technomediatrix, I investigate sites of scientific and technocultural innovation through ethnography and textual analysis. My research and teaching draw on ideas from science and technology studies, media and cultural studies, feminism and gender studies, cyborg anthropology, critical military studies, disability studies, and social theories of health and medicine.
I’m interested in how cultural power is bound up in the artifacts we make, how we use them, and the knowledge they allow us to produce.
Self-portrait with CRT, Salton Sea, CA
Since fall 2015, I have been had the privilege to teach in the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science at Lyman Briggs College in Michigan State University. LBC is a residential, undergraduate-focused community that pursues excellence in teaching, learning, and researching science in its diverse human, social, and global contexts. Here, I am leading an effort to re-imagine our first-year writing course as a curriculum that promotes critical science literacy through largely collaborative, inquiry-based projects.
At MSU, I am also a core faculty member of the Center for Gender in Global Context, participate in the Science in Society Reading Group and Biopolitics and Futurism Collective. Since 2014, I have also served as the vice chair of the Cultural Studies Association Working Group on Culture and War, along with Ben Schrader and Howard Hastings.
I completed my Ph.D. in Communication and Science Studies at UC San Diego in May 2013. Between fall 2013 and spring 2015, I lectured in the Department of Communication and Science, Technology & Society Program at UC San Diego. While at UCSD, I co-convened Center for the Humanities Comics Studies Research Group, worked in the Culture, Art & Technology Program, and collaborated with the Veterans Affairs Hospital in La Jolla to study innovations in mental health care using digital media.
I am also a freelance editor, comics creator, a DIY-enthusiast, and voracious consumer of media. Check out the Technomediatrix Blog, my sandbox/staging area for musing on technoscience and culture.
I post frequently on Facebook (friend me for access to most posts) and much less so on Twitter. You can also find me on Academia.edu and LinkedIn.
Download a PDF of my full curriculum vitae here: BrandtCV-S19 (updated January 2019).
Marisa R. Brandt 