current affiliations
- Department of the History of Science
- Department of Medical History and Bioethics
- Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
- Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies
- Center for Culture, History, and Environment
research interests
My research and teaching interests span the history of ecology, nature, and health in twentieth-century America across scientific and popular culture. Particular research areas include the history of ecology, environment and health, 20th century life sciences, science in America, science and film.
current projects
America’s Rubber Empire: Science, Commerce, and Disease in the Making of Firestone Plantations Company.
This book is a historical account of the 1926 Harvard Medical Expedition to Liberia and the environmental and social consequences that followed in its wake. It is a story of ecology and disease, of commerce and science, of racial politics and political maneuvering. It is also a reminder of how deeply intertwined natural resource needs and national security have been in the history of U.S. twentieth and twenty-first century economic and foreign relations.
The Elephant and Its Teeth
This film, under development with Sarita Siegel, draws upon recent studies in cognitive ethology as well as almost a century of scientific research and personal anecdotes documenting the changing culture and behaviour of elephants in Africa to inform and educate the public on how closely intertwined the fate of human and animal lives are. It encourages audiences to reflect on how the history of violence and conflict has lasting repercussions for individual and cultural survival—both of elephants and humans. And it asks viewers to consider how the separation of humans from other forms of intelligent life and the treatment of animals as commodities leads to acts of injustice that ultimately harm people and animals.
Documenting the World: Photographic Media and the Scientific Record
This working group of the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin, organized in collaboration with Kelley Wilder and Lorraine Daston, draws together experts from the fields of photographic history, visual anthropology, art history, history of science, and film history to attend to both the material and cultural histories of the photographic, filmic, or digital scientific record. In a planned published volume, essays will address the status of documents made with photographic media across the range of photography, film and digital imaging, concentrating on the use and creation of that basic building block of the archive, the scientific record.
awards
- Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Renewed Research Fellowship, 2008.
- Vilas Associate Award, University of Wisconsin, 2006-2008.
- Dean’s Professorship, College of Letters and Science, 2005-2010.
- Aldo Leopold-Ralph W. Hidy Award, American Society for Environmental History, 2006.
- John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2004
- American Council of Learned Societies Fellow, 2004
- Glaxo-Smith-Kline Senior Fellow, National Humanities Center, 2004-2005
- National Library of Medicine Research Fellow, 2003
- Senior Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 1999-2000
- Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung-Fellow, 1999-2000
- Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Fellow, Princeton University, 1997-1998
- Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, 1986-1987
