Who Gets Named

by bam

Doing the work and being named for it are two different events. They happen at different times, they leave different records, and the second one is decided by machinery you can learn. This course teaches that machinery: the Matthew effect, which sends credit to whoever is already eminent; the Matilda effect, which routes a woman's contribution to a male colleague; the authorship conventions that decide who goes on the paper and who is thanked underneath it; the split in patent law between the humans who must be named and the company that owns the result; the four moments at which an archive goes quiet; and how a correction actually happens, who does it, how long it takes, and what it can and cannot repair. Six people carry the evidence: Pauli Murray, whose argument the Brown litigation used; Vivien Thomas, who built an operation he was not permitted to author; Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken and whose name was replaced with a false one; Annie Turnbo Malone, whose business records mostly did not survive; Claudette Colvin, whom a movement chose not to name; and Selma Burke, whose claim on the dime has never been settled either way. Where the evidence is genuinely argued, this course teaches the argument and names who holds which position, because a dispute closed by assertion is not history.