A Cyborg Manifesto

Donna Haraway, the author of A Cyborg Manifesto, was born in 1944 in Denver, Colorado. She went to Catholic school as a child, which has influenced her ideas and writing, though she has never been religious as an adult. Haraway attended Colorado College, where she studied zoology, philosophy, and English. She went on to complete a PhD in biology at Yale in 1972. Haraway’s PhD thesis focused on metaphors in organic biology.

Donna Haraway has had a long career in academia. She became a professor of women’s studies and the history of science at the University of Hawaii in 1971, and then moved on to Johns Hopkins University in 1974. In 1980, she became a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is currently a professor emerita in the history of consciousness and feminist studies departments.

Much of Haraway’s writing focuses on gender bias and feminism within science. A Cyborg Manifesto discusses feminism in a more political sense, though it often uses scientific concepts as metaphors and examples. The author’s interest in biology and the sciences in general is very evident in the essay. A Cyborg Manifesto is Haraway’s most famous essay and has come to be seen as an important contribution to feminist theory.