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Birth and early life
Donna Haraway was born in Denver, Colorado. Her mother was very Irish Catholic and died from a heart attack when she was 16. Her father was a sports journalist for The Denver Post. -
Early Education and Influences
Haraway went to Highschool in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado and attended St Mary's Academy. Catholicism a relative impact on her study of philosophy. The concept of the Eucharist aided her thoughts on the correlation between the material and the allegorical.
She shared her fathers' love for words. Growing up under the climate of international conflict and sharing conversations with her father about their love of language had a large part in shaping her writing skill and style. -
Higher Education
Donna Haraway went to college on a fulltime scholarship at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. There, she studied Zoology with a minor in Philosophy and English. Following college, she moved to Paris and attended the Fondation Teilhard de Chardin with a Fulbright scholarship, where she studied evolutionary philosophy and theology. -
Metaphor Shaping Experimental Biology
Haraway completed her dissertation "The Search for Organizing Relations: An Organismic Paradigm in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology" and achieved a PHD in Biology from Yale. She later republished her dissertation as a book titled "Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology." -
“Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s”
One of Haraway’s most well-known publications is her 195 essay “Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the 1980s”. In this work, she uses the term “cyborg” as a way to deconstruct concepts of identity that are inherent in our society. She uses this approach to discuss socialism and the feminist movement of the 1980s, where she argued that modern society is established in such a way that keeps women from identifying as part of a larger whole based on their gender. -
“Situated Knowledge”
Haraway wrote “Situated Knowledge” in response to Sandra Harding’s work The Science Question in Feminism. Harding’s book discusses feminist science, suggesting a binary which Haraway disagreed with. Haraway proposed that in science (as well as many other matters), the creation of a binary system is not only limiting but inaccurate, inviting that both polarities meet in a “situated knowledge.” -
“Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science”
Haraway wrote “Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science”, an essay about the history of biology and it’s masculine-dominated perspective. She commented on the concepts of the dominant male and the receptive female, and argued that if women in the field of biology were to analyze the accepted theory of reproduction, there would be many different findings. This marks a specific application of Haraway’s career discussion of the masculine bias in the sciences. -
“Make Kin not Babies”
More recently, Haraway embarked on a project named “Make Kin not Babies”, which is best represented in this attached video. -
The Legacy of Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway PhD has contributed greatly to the world of science and society in general by challenging the gender binary that leads to ignorant and isolating mentalities. In working to disassemble the polarity between men and women, Haraway has helped us down the path toward a sex-blind future.