Considers how our ideas about mathematics shape our individual and cultural relationship to the field.
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.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. The Discursive Construction of Gendered Subjectivity in Mathematics
3. Mathematical Subjectivity in Historical Accounts
4. The Role of Portraiture in Constructing a Normative Mathematical Subjectivity
5. The Ethnomathematical Other
6. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Sara N. Hottinger is Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Keene State College.
