Clarissa Chevalier

Clarissa Chevalier (she/her) is an assistant professor in the Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College. Her research merges feminist science and technology studies (STS) with contemporary environmental science, examining how scientific imaging technologies, computational models, physical simulations, and sensing systems shape understandings of ocean life, ecological change, and climate futures. Through feminist STS and media analysis, Chevalier traces the material, political, and epistemological conditions that make scientific representations possible, attending to the labor, infrastructures, and situated practices through which environmental knowledge is produced. Her research and teaching are rooted in the conviction that sustained collaboration across the arts, humanities, and sciences expands both the analytical and methodological possibilities of feminist STS.

Chevalier regularly coauthors feminist STS scholarship with scientists, develops public-facing art/science projects and publications with artists, and curates exhibitions exploring the cultural and political dimensions of scientific representation. She pursues a hands-on, embodied approach to feminist analyses of environmental science through direct participation in scientific research, including a multi-week oceanographic fieldwork cruise. Chevalier was the first student at the University of California San Diego to earn a PhD in Art History, Theory, and Criticism through the Department of Visual Arts alongside a PhD specialization in Interdisciplinary Environmental Research through the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Additionally, she is associate editor of production and design at Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that supports cutting-edge feminist STS theory. She is currently developing her first monograph, a feminist STS reframing of 20th- and 21st-century biological oceanography.

Articles and Book Chapters

Chevalier, Clarissa. “The Ocean Is Not a Machine: A Feminist Media Analysis of Oceanographic Models, Simulations, and Futures.” World Futures Review, April 13, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1177/19467567261443105.

Chevalier, Clarissa, and Dante Capone. “Between Tactile and Digital: Zooplankton, Visual Science Studies, and the Automation of Oceanographic Observation.” In Visualizing Oceanography: Pacific Collaborations in Art and Science Research. Edited by Lisa Cartwright, Nan Renner, and Joe Riley. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2026. ISBN: 9781350526211.

Chevalier, Clarissa. “Clay as a Technical Medium: Claudine Arendt’s Through a Porcelain Cast.” In Visualizing Oceanography: Pacific Collaborations in Art and Science Research. Edited by Lisa Cartwright, Nan Renner, and Joe Riley. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2026. ISBN: 9781350526211.

Chevalier, Clarissa. “Embodied Encounters with Plankton: Ground Truth Methods as Sites for Human- Ocean Entanglement”. Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism, 13, no 2 (2025): 43-59. https://doi.org/10.7358/rela-2025-02-chec.

Chevalier, Clarissa. “Review: Living Surfaces: Images, Plants, and Environments of Media by Abelardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka.” Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology, 33, no 2 (Spring 2025): 211–214. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2025.a965611.

Chevalier, Clarissa. “Agnes Denes: Ecological Art and Cultural Sustainability.” The Palgrave Handbook of Global Sustainability. Edited by Robert Brinkmann. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38948-2_193-1.

Chevalier, Clarissa. “Eco-Phenomenology and the Maintenance of Eco Art: Agnes Denes's A Forest for Australia.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol 21, no 2, 1–18. December 16, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2021.1992726.

Co-Creator and co-performer, in collaboration with artist Jess Hotz. “Drifting with Plankton: An Interactive Performance Lecture on Ocean Art, Science, and Sensory Knowledge.” MIT Museum, forthcoming 2027.

Curator. Embodied Pacific: Through a Porcelain Cast, supported by the Getty Pacific Standard Time: Art & Science Collide project, Geisel Library, University of California San Diego 2024.

Co-Curator with Lisa Cartwright. Embodied Pacific: Seaways, supported by the Getty Pacific Standard Time: Art & Science Collide project, Visual Arts Gallery at the Structural and Material Engineering Building, University of California San Diego, 2024.