Laura A Foster
Biographic Data
| ID | 115022 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura A Foster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura A |
| FAMILY NAME | Foster |
| SIGNATURE | FOSTER L A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7804-2345 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Catalyst Lead Editing as Creative Worldbuilding
In this piece for the 10th anniversary issue, one of Catalyst’s early lead editorial teams reflects on their experiences. A short collective introduction offers a metaphor of the journal as a garden that was inherited when it was already spring. Then, each of the trio in this lead editor team—Anne Pollock, Nassim Parvin, and Laura Foster—shares her reflections in turn, foregrounding different scales of the endeavor: cultivating authors, peer revi…
Plants as Inventors: Interrogating Human Exceptionalism within Narratives of Law and Vegetal Life
Drawing upon decolonial feminist science studies and critical plant studies, this article posits plants as inventors to develop a vegetal feminist approach for understanding the human exceptionalism that is central to conventional narratives of patent law and vegetal life. This critical analysis of the Hoodia gordonii case examines the anthropocentric assumptions of patent law, interrogates colonial legacies that obscure notions of plants as sent…
How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy
Reviewed by: How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy Xan Chacko (bio), Sushmita Chatterjee (bio), Laura Foster (bio), Brian Sabel (bio), sam smiley (bio), and Banu Subramaniam (bio) Sumana Roy, How I Became a Tree. Yale University Press, 2021, ISBN 9780300260441. This is an unusual book. As you begin reading, you realize it is unlike most academic books. Overall, a deeply pensive collection of pieces—memories of childhood, meditations on various books,…
Reinventing Hoodia: Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa
Reinventing Hoodia: Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa
A Postapartheid Genome: Genetic Ancestry Testing and Belonging in South Africa
This article examines a genetic ancestry testing program called the Living History Project (LHP) that was jointly organized by a nonprofit educational institute and a for-profit genealogy company in South Africa. It charts the precise mechanisms by which the LHP sought to shape a postapartheid genome through antiracist commitments aimed at contesting histories of colonial and apartheid rule in varied ways. In particular, it focuses on several ten…
The Making and Unmaking of Patent Ownership: Technicalities, Materialities, and Subjectivities
Feminist sociolegal studies have recently taken up the technicalities of doctrines, documents, and regulations to better understand the law. In an affiliated move, feminist science studies turned to the materialities of theories, practices, and nonhuman organisms to make critical sense of science. These methodological turns focus not on gender, per se, but on precise mechanisms of law and science that structure, reinforce, and reconfigure power a…
Patents, Biopolitics, and Feminisms: Locating Patent Law Struggles over Breast Cancer Genes and theHoodiaPlant
This article suggests three critical inquiries for formulating a feminist analysis of patent law. The first questions how patent law functions as a strategy within neoliberal, biopolitics. The second examines how patent law is structured through biopolitical techniques of governance by examining two conceptions of the public domain I callopen public domainandprotective public domain. The third inquiry, drawing upon feminist science studies, asks …
Patents, Biopolitics, and Feminisms: Locating Patent Law Struggles over Breast Cancer Genes and theHoodiaPlant
This article suggests three critical inquiries for formulating a feminist analysis of patent law. The first questions how patent law functions as a strategy within neoliberal, biopolitics. The second examines how patent law is structured through biopolitical techniques of governance by examining two conceptions of the public domain I callopen public domainandprotective public domain. The third inquiry, drawing upon feminist science studies, asks …
The Making and Unmaking of Patent Ownership: Technicalities, Materialities, and Subjectivities
Feminist sociolegal studies have recently taken up the technicalities of doctrines, documents, and regulations to better understand the law. In an affiliated move, feminist science studies turned to the materialities of theories, practices, and nonhuman organisms to make critical sense of science. These methodological turns focus not on gender, per se, but on precise mechanisms of law and science that structure, reinforce, and reconfigure power a…
A Postapartheid Genome: Genetic Ancestry Testing and Belonging in South Africa
This article examines a genetic ancestry testing program called the Living History Project (LHP) that was jointly organized by a nonprofit educational institute and a for-profit genealogy company in South Africa. It charts the precise mechanisms by which the LHP sought to shape a postapartheid genome through antiracist commitments aimed at contesting histories of colonial and apartheid rule in varied ways. In particular, it focuses on several ten…
Patents, Biopolitics, and Feminisms: Locating Patent Law Struggles over Breast Cancer Genes and theHoodiaPlant
This article suggests three critical inquiries for formulating a feminist analysis of patent law. The first questions how patent law functions as a strategy within neoliberal, biopolitics. The second examines how patent law is structured through biopolitical techniques of governance by examining two conceptions of the public domain I callopen public domainandprotective public domain. The third inquiry, drawing upon feminist science studies, asks …
A Postapartheid Genome: Genetic Ancestry Testing and Belonging in South Africa
This article examines a genetic ancestry testing program called the Living History Project (LHP) that was jointly organized by a nonprofit educational institute and a for-profit genealogy company in South Africa. It charts the precise mechanisms by which the LHP sought to shape a postapartheid genome through antiracist commitments aimed at contesting histories of colonial and apartheid rule in varied ways. In particular, it focuses on several ten…
The Making and Unmaking of Patent Ownership: Technicalities, Materialities, and Subjectivities
Feminist sociolegal studies have recently taken up the technicalities of doctrines, documents, and regulations to better understand the law. In an affiliated move, feminist science studies turned to the materialities of theories, practices, and nonhuman organisms to make critical sense of science. These methodological turns focus not on gender, per se, but on precise mechanisms of law and science that structure, reinforce, and reconfigure power a…
Reinventing Hoodia: Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa
Reinventing Hoodia: Peoples, Plants, and Patents in South Africa
Plants as Inventors: Interrogating Human Exceptionalism within Narratives of Law and Vegetal Life
Drawing upon decolonial feminist science studies and critical plant studies, this article posits plants as inventors to develop a vegetal feminist approach for understanding the human exceptionalism that is central to conventional narratives of patent law and vegetal life. This critical analysis of the Hoodia gordonii case examines the anthropocentric assumptions of patent law, interrogates colonial legacies that obscure notions of plants as sent…
How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy
Reviewed by: How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy Xan Chacko (bio), Sushmita Chatterjee (bio), Laura Foster (bio), Brian Sabel (bio), sam smiley (bio), and Banu Subramaniam (bio) Sumana Roy, How I Became a Tree. Yale University Press, 2021, ISBN 9780300260441. This is an unusual book. As you begin reading, you realize it is unlike most academic books. Overall, a deeply pensive collection of pieces—memories of childhood, meditations on various books,…
Catalyst Lead Editing as Creative Worldbuilding
In this piece for the 10th anniversary issue, one of Catalyst’s early lead editorial teams reflects on their experiences. A short collective introduction offers a metaphor of the journal as a garden that was inherited when it was already spring. Then, each of the trio in this lead editor team—Anne Pollock, Nassim Parvin, and Laura Foster—shares her reflections in turn, foregrounding different scales of the endeavor: cultivating authors, peer revi…
Political science (4 works) · Law (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Aesthetics (2 works) · Art (2 works) · Colonialism (2 works) · Geography (2 works) · History (2 works) · Law (2 works) · Literature (2 works)