Imagining the mathematician
Subtitle: gender, race, and our cultural understanding of mathematics
By: Sara N. Hottinger
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2016
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 205
ISBN-13: 9781438460093; 9781438460116
Subjects: Social aspects; Mathematics; Mathematicians; History
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.