Education
Ph. D.: Indiana University, Department of History and Philosophy of
Science, February 2000
(Minor: Anthropology)
Dissertation: “The Naturalization of Humanity in
America, 1776-1861”
M. A.: Indiana University, Department of History and Philosophy of
Science, December 1993
M. A.: University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Department of History,
December 1992
Thesis: “From the Arena of God to the Struggle for
Existence: Human Beings and Nature in Western European Thought,
1650-1890”
B. A.: University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Department of History,
August 1987
Research Interests
The cultural and social history of heredity and human nature in the United States after the Revolution; history of connections between the social, biological, and medical sciences including some comparative studies; history of American science.
Courses Taught
August, 2002 and Beyond: Assistant Professor, Department of
History
1998 to December, 2002: Lecturer, Department of History, University
of Dayton
HST 485: Seminar in American History (History of
American Science)
HST 385: Atlantic World
HST 376: The Social and Cultural History of the United States
HST 348: Life and Technology
HST, 347: Sex, Race, and Science
HST
340: History of Science
HST 307: Renaissance and Reformation (summer course in
Florence, Italy 2001 and 2004)
HST 198: Honors Seminar in History (team-taught,
Winter, 2001 and 2002), Berry Scholars Seminar (taught in Winter, 2006-2008)
HST 103: The West and the World
HST 102: Western Civilization, 1715-Present (including
Scholars Sections)
1993-1996: Assistant Instructor, Department of History and Philosophy
of Science, Indiana University
X100: Civilization, Race, Culture (Personally designed
course)
X102: Revolutions in Science
E104: Evolution, Religion, and Modern Society (Assisted)
S300: Community (Assisted)
1985-1989: Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University
of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
Western Civilization from 1500 to the Present (Assisted)
United States History, 1865 to the Present (Assisted)
Publications
Monographs/Articles
"Quantifying Characters: Polygenist Anthropologists and the Hardening of
Heredity," Journal of the History of Biology Vol. 41, 1 (March, 2008).
"Posthumanism and the Infinite: An Historian Looks into the Abyss,
International Journal of the Humanities,
Vol. 5, 8 (2007): 141-150.
Book Manuscript in Progress: “We the People: Heredity, Social Science, and
Identity in America, 1776-1861” (forthcoming, Johns Hopkins
University Press).
“Anthropometry,” in The Reader's Guide to the History of Science
(Arne Hessenbruch, ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
“The Romantic AND the Technical in Early Nineteenth-Century American
Exploration,” in Surveying the Record: North American
Exploration
to 1900 (Edward Carter, ed.). Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1999.
Book Reviews
Barry Alan Joyce, The Shaping of
American Ethnography: The Wilkes Expedition, 1838-1842 (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2001), in Isis, 95, 2
(2004): 306-307.
Brian Regal, Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the
Origins of Man (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2002), in
the Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 36 (2003):
608-610.
David Cahan and M. Eugene Rudd, Science at the American
Frontier: A
University of Nebraska Press, 2000) in History of
Education Quarterly, Vol. 41, #4 (Winter 2001): 534-536.
Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds.) Sexology in Culture: Labelling Bodies and Desires
and Sexology Uncensored: The Documents of Sexual Science
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) in Journal of the History of Sexuality, 9, 3 (July, 2000):
348-351.
Awards and Fellowships
Awards:
1996-1997: Given the Victor E. Thoren Graduate Student Research
Scholarship, Indiana University Foundation and the
Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
1994-1995: Named the annual fellow in the Program for Scientific
Dimensions of Society, Indiana University
Fellowships:
2005: Research Council Seed Grant, University of Dayton
2003: Research Council Seed Grant, University of Dayton
2003: Fund for Educational Development Grant, University of Dayton, to develop
HST 347: Sex, Race, and Science
2002: Faculty Fund for
Vocational Exploration Research Grant (University of Dayton and the Lilly
Endowment, Inc.)
1997-1998: Research Incentive Dissertation Year Fellowship, from
the University Graduate School, Indiana
University (Academic Year).
1997-1998: Resident Research Fellow in the Francis Clark Wood
Institute for the History of Medicine, College of
Physicians of Philadelphia (September, 1997).
1996-1997: Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution
(May through August, 1997).
1996-1997: Dissertation Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early
American Studies (Academic year).
1995-1996: Andrew W. Mellon Resident Fellow at the American Philosophical
Society.
Papers/Conferences
Fifth Annual Conference in Citizenship
Studies: "The Boundaries of Citizenship," Center for the Study of Citizenship,
Wayne State University, March 2008
"Citizens, Peoples, and Nations: Anthropology and Native
American Acculturation in the Antebellum Era"
International Conference on Arts and
Humanities, Columbia University, New York, January 2007
“Posthumanism and the Infinite: An Historian Looks into the
Abyss”
International Conference on Arts and
Humanities,
Honolulu, January 2006
"Turning to Nature: Revolution, Heredity and Republican
Machines"
International Conference on Arts and
Humanities, Honolulu, January 2005
“The Volume of
Paris' Face: Print Culture, Science, and Heredity”
Society for the Social Studies of
Science, Atlanta, Georgia, October 2003
“Race and
the Breeders’ World View during the American Revolution”
Colloquium, History Department, University of Dayton,
November 2002
"The American Experiment," Chapter
1 of the book manuscript, "We the People": Heredity, Social Science
and Identity in America, 1776-1861
Invited Talk, Lone Star History of Science Group, 5 April, 2002
“Quantifying Characters:
Polygenist Anthropologists and the Hardening of Heredity”
German Society for the History of Medicine, Workshop on “Reassessing
Canguilhem,”
“Impure People:
Miscegenation, Specimen Collection, and the Question of Racial Types or Norms in
American Anthropology, 1815-1860”
Colloquium, History Department, University of Dayton, April 2000
“Words, Blood, and Property: Lewis Henry Morgan’s
Anthropology and the Cultural History of Heredity”
History of Science Society, 1998 Annual Meeting
“Words, Blood, and Property: Lewis Henry Morgan's
Kinship System and the Doctrine of Indigenous Republicanism”
Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies Seminar, 11 April 1997
“Dr. Morton's Golgotha and the Naturalization of
Humanity”
American Philosophical Society Conference, “Surveying the Record,”
16 March 1997
“The Romantic AND the Technical in Early Nineteenth-Century
American Exploration”
History of Education Society, 1994 Annual Meeting
“From Taxonomy to Ethnology: Societies, Institutions,
and the Training of Early American ‘Anthropologists’”
History of Science Society, 1994 Annual Meeting
“A Place in the Wilderness: Utility and the Native
in Early American Natural History”
Midwest Junto for the History of Science, 1994 Annual Meeting
“The Science of Progress: Natural History and Anthropology
during the Indian Removal Period”
Society for the Social Studies of Science, 1993 Annual Meeting
“The Rationalization of the Native: The Davenport
Conspiracy, the Bureau of Ethnology and the Acculturation of
the American Indian”
Professional Activities
University of Dayton:
Faculty Discussant, panel relating to Bill
Mckibben’s book Enough addressed to
science majors,
September 2006
Panel Discussant, A Panel on the Work of E. O. Wilson
sponsored by the Berry Scholars Program, October 2004
Faculty Participant, Annual Humanities Symposium, “The
Two Cultures Revisited” (General participation plus playing Galileo in the
“Meeting of the Minds” presentation, Semester II, 2001)
Faculty Discussant in the Fourteenth Annual Scholars Symposium, “Issues
in Disabilities” (Semester II, 2001)
Teaching Fellows Program (2000-2001)
Member, General Education Cluster Committee, Values Technology and
Society Cluster
Humanities Base Workshop (1998-1999 and 1999-2000)
Participant in the Twelfth Annual Scholars Symposium, “The Storm Over
Stem Cells” (Semester II, 1999)
Curriculum Committee (1998-1999)
General Professional Activities:
Web Site Editor, Forum for the History of American Science
Reviewer for the journal, The American Historical Review
Reviewer for the journal, Science, Technology, and Human Values
Honors and Societies
Member, History of Science Society
Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
1988-1989: President of the Milwaukee chapter of the Phi Alpha
Theta history honor society
Graduate Cum Laude (BA)