In STEM of Desire: Queer Theories and Science Education, provocative original manuscripts draw on queer theories to instigate and investigate entangled relations of STEM education, sex, sexuality, gender, and manifold desires to advance constructive critique, creative world-making, and (com)passionate advocacy.

STEM of Desire: Queer Theories and Science Education locates, creates, and investigates intersections of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and queer theorizing. Manifold desires—personal, political, cultural—produce and animate STEM education. Queer theories instigate and explore (im)possibilities for knowing and being through desires normal and strange. The provocative original manuscripts in this collection draw on queer theories and allied perspectives to trace entanglements of STEM education, sex, sexuality, gender, and desire and to advance constructive critique, creative world-making, and (com)passionate advocacy. Not just another call for inclusion, this volume turns to what and how STEM education and diverse, desiring subjects might be(come) in relation to each other and the world. STEM of Desire is the first book-length project on queering STEM education. Eighteen chapters and two poems by 27 contributors consider STEM education in schools and universities, museums and other informal learning environments, and everyday life. Subject areas include physical and life sciences, engineering, mathematics, nursing and medicine, environmental education, early childhood education, teacher education, and education standards. These queering orientations to theory, research, and practice will interest STEM teacher educators, teachers and professors, undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, policy makers, and academic libraries. Contributors are: Jesse Bazzul, Charlotte Boulay, Francis S. Broadway, Erin A. Cech, Steve Fifield, blake m. r. flessas, Andrew Gilbert, Helene Götschel, Emily M. Gray, Kristin L. Gunckel, Joe E. Heimlich, Tommye Hutson, Kathryn L. Kirchgasler, Michelle L. Knaier, Sheri Leafgren, Will Letts, Anna MacDermut, Michael J. Reiss, Donna M. Riley, Cecilia Rodéhn, Scott Sander, Nicholas Santavicca, James Sheldon, Amy E. Slaton, Stephen Witzig, Timothy D. Zimmerman, and Adrian Zongrone.

Joining the ancient debate over the roles of reason and appetite in the moral mind, In Praise of Desire takes the side of appetite. The book makes the claim that acting for moral reasons, acting in a praiseworthy manner, and acting out of virtue amount to nothing more than acting out of intrinsic desires for the right or the good, correctly conceived. In Praise of Desire shows that a desire-centered moral psychology can be richer than philosophers commonly think, accommodating the full complexity of moral life.

How are emotions related to values? This book argues against a perceptual theory of emotions, which sees emotions as perception-like states that help us gain evaluative knowledge, and argues for a caring-based theory of emotions, which sees emotions as felt desires or desire satisfactions, both of which arise out of caring about something.

This book centres on Samuel Pufendorf’s (1632–1694) moral and political philosophy, a subject of recently renewed interest among intellectual historians, philosophers and legal scholars in the English-speaking world. Pufendorf’s significance in conceptualizing sociability in a way that ties moral philosophy, the theory of the state, political economy, and moral psychology together has already been acknowledged, but this book is the first systematic investigation of the moral psychological underpinnings of Pufendorf’s theory of sociability in their own right. Readers will discover how Pufendorf’s psychological and social explanation of sociability plays a crucial role in his natural law theory. By drawing attention to Pufendorf’s scattered remarks and observations on human psychology, a new interpretation of the importance of moral psychology is presented. The author maintains that Pufendorf’s reflection on the psychological and physical capacities of human nature also matters for his description of how people adopt sociability as their moral standard in practice. We see how, since Pufendorf’s interest in human nature is mainly political, moral psychological formulations are important for Pufendorf’s theorizing of social and political order. This work is particularly useful for scholars investigating the multifaceted role of passions and emotions in the history of moral and political philosophy. It also affords a better understanding of what later philosophers, such as Smith, Hume or Rousseau, might have find appealing in Pufendorf’s writings. As such, this book will also interest researchers of the Enlightenment, natural law and early modern philosophy.