My work explores the intersection of science and American popular culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I'm interested in the process by which science became first a topic of polite conversation, then a launching pad for political and literary fantasies, and finally, in the rueful words of a liberal Baptist minister in 1932, "the arbiter of this generation's thought."
I am currently completing a volume on the cultural history of radiation and radioactivity in the United States, in which I elaborate on the evolving public understanding of those phenomena between their discovery in the 1890s and the use of nuclear weapons in the second World War.
M.A. and Ph.D. in History of Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008)
A.B., Kenyon College (1997)
The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States: Patient Experiences and Public Perceptions, forthcoming article in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (2011).
Radioactive Earths as Nature Cures in Early Twentieth-Century American Culture, presentation to the International Society for the History of Medicine, Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 2011.
"Spectro-Chrome Therapy and Early American Nuclear Culture," forthcoming presentation to the Northeast Popular Culture Association, Oct. 2010.
"Politics, Neuroses, and Blind Nationalism," review for Exploring Globalization of Richard Rhodes Arsenals of Folly, 2009
"'These rays that blast and wither but do not consume'": American Physicists' Evolving Rhetoric on Radiation, 1895-1935," forthcoming presentation to the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, 2009
"Consumer goods, the science of advertising, and the popular rehabilitation of radioactive substances," paper presented to the Southern History of Science and Technology regional meeting, 2009
National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant, 2007.
William Coleman Fellowship, 2007
"'Radiumac Does Wonders, Contains No Radium': Radon-Infused Water and Early American Nuclear Culture," paper presented to the History of Science Society Annual Meeting, 2007
"Science Fiction and the Fear of Science," invited presentation at the Bakken Museum of Electricity and Life and the Minneapolis Humanities Council, 2006
"Radium Tonics Revisited: The Brief Half-Life of the Eben Byers Story," presentation to the Midwest Junto Conference, 2006
"The Post-Mortem Construction of the Iconic Einstein," presentation to the Joint Atlantic Seminar on the History of the Physical Sciences (JASHOPS), 2005
"Politics, Neuroses, and Blind Nationalism," review for Exploring Globalization of Richard Rhodes Arsenals of Folly , 2009
Teaching Experience
HI 1073: American History, 1877-present
HI 4243/6243: American Life and Thought
HI 4253/6253: American Religious History
HI 4653/6653: History of Science and Technology
HI 8990: Science in Science Fiction
HI 8873: Graduate Colloquium on the History of Science
International Society for the History of Medicine
Professional Affliations
History of Science Society
American Historical Association
Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association
Selected Academic Interests
- The history of ionizing radiation in American nonscientific culture (dissertation)
- Chess-playing computers and the evolution of machine learning strategies
- Science popularization and the American press, 1920-1930
- Institutional and professional history of bioethics in America
- History of games and American culture
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