Inventing the Mathematician : Gender, Race, and Our Cultural Understanding of Mathematics / Sara N. Hottinger.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hottinger, Sara N., 1976-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematicians.

Mathematics--History.

Mathematics.

Mathematics--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : State University of New York Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Where and how do we, as a culture, get our ideas about mathematics and about who can engage with mathematical knowledge? Sara N. Hottinger uses a cultural studies approach to address how our ideas about mathematics shape our individual and cultural relationship to the field. She considers four locations in which representations of mathematics contribute to our cultural understanding of mathematics: mathematics textbooks, the history of mathematics, portraits of mathematicians, and the field of ethnomathematics. Hottinger examines how these discourses shape mathematical subjectivity by limiting the way some groups—including women and people of color—are able to see themselves as practitioners of math. Inventing the Mathematician provides a blueprint for how to engage in a deconstructive project, revealing the limited and problematic nature of the normative construction of mathematical subjectivity.

Contents:

Introduction

The discursive construction of gendered subjectivity in mathematics

Mathematical subjectivity in historical accounts

The role of portraiture in constructing a normative mathematical subjectivity

The ethnomathematical other

Conclusion.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438460116

1438460112

OCLC:

944463849