Performance All the Way Down

“Readers of [Prum’s] earlier work, including his 2017 book, The Evolution of Beauty, will find themselves intrigued by his continued engagement with feminist science studies—and he has done his homework… . Performance All the Way Down contains a lot of big ideas, both because of the biological content Prum strives to convey to his readers and because of the sophisticated nature of the feminist theory he mobilizes… . To understand the full scope of Prum’s vision, I encourage you to read it in full.” * Science *
“Prum offers a meticulous tour of the molecular pathways that underlie stereotypical sex­ual development in humans, as well as the myriad ways that any individual person’s development might differ… . If you read Performance All the Way Down, you’ll be presented with an abun­dance of interesting stories drawn from developmental biology, ecology, cultural anthropology, and more. My own copy is replete with dog-eared pages that had information I’m excited to think more about.” * American Biology Teacher *
“A renowned biologist meets queer theory, and creativity takes flight. A joyful and expansive celebration of the complexity and contingency of sex.” – Sarah S. Richardson, Harvard University
“Highly recommended.” * Choice *
“A powerful appeal for an intersectional rethinking of the science, materiality, and culture of human sex, Performance All the Way Down undoes the scientific justifications for categories of a sex and gender binary that have contributed scientific support to sexual oppression. Discussing biology, queer theory, and feminism together—in a shared vocabulary—Prum successfully expands intellectual space for queer feminist analysis and research within genetics, evolutionary biology, and developmental biology. This book will be discussed across the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences for years to come.” – David A. Rubin, University of South Florida
“An ambitious, deeply interdisciplinary, and profound effort to grapple with the biological meanings of ‘sex.’ Prum tackles a set of crucial questions in a rigorous, thoughtful, and playful way, with implications that open up a landscape of transformative possibilities for the consideration of sex in biological research and scholarship.” – Stacey A. Ritz, McMaster University

Richard O. Prum is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and the head curator of vertebrate zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum. He is the author of The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us, one of the New York Times’s “10 Best Books of 2017” and a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.

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