Perspectives

Join historian Melanie Kiechle as she delves into the history of health and sensory perception in 19th century urban environments.

In Bone Rooms, Samuel Redman explores the history of human remains collecting. The collection and display of bodily remains became central to debates about ethics, repatriation, and scientific authority that continue today.

In this podcast episode, we discuss the history of how biblical notions of race influenced European understandings of Africa.

Dóra Vargha uses a series of polio epidemics in communist Hungary to understand the response to a global public health emergency in the midst of the Cold War.

Joseph Martin tells the story of how solid state physics challenged and redefined some of the core ideals of American physics, and in the process played an essential role in sustaining the prestige physics enjoyed in Cold War American society.

Listen to historian Susan Lindee as she discusses how the military establishment transformed science and technology, interrogates why the victims of technologies of war are often left out of our historical accounts, and questions whether growing defense budgets are in society's best interests.

Neeraja Sankaran provides a novel approach to the history of the development of medical virology by comparing the history of two groups of medically important viruses: bacteriophages and sarcoma agents.

Listen to historian Alberto Martínez as he discusses the ways in which the visionary discoveries of Giordano Bruno were unfairly discredited and excised from history in a centuries-long campaign against the heterodox philosopher and cosmologist.

Lucas Richert discusses the theory and practice of psychiatry in the 1960s and 1970s, exploring the ways that radical psychiatry and the counterculture changed the discipline. 

Eric Hintz explores the history of independent inventors, their complex relationship with corporate America, and their resurgence in the late 20th and 21st centuries. 

Douglas O'Reagan discusses the Allied effort to appropriate German science, technology, and industrial capability during and after World War II.

Stephen Weldon discusses the history of the humanist movement in America and the ways in which its "scientific spirit" became central to American liberal culture and values.

Adam R. Shapiro examines the Scopes Trial and the antievolution movement in America from a new vantage point, turning to the early twentieth century science textbook industry and push for compulsory education to understand the battle over what was taught in America's schools.

Eugenia Lean explores the transformation of Chinese industry in the early twentieth century. Lean demonstrates the importance of culture and knowledge production to China's industrial, technological, and economic development.

Listen in as professor of History and Philosophy of Science Ofer Gal offers a peek into his exploration of science as a global cultural phenomenon.

Joseph Malherek explains the socialist roots of U.S. social research. He charts the lives and careers of Hungarian artist-designer László Moholy-Nagy, the Austrian sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, and his fellow Viennese Victor Gruen—an architect and urban planner—to tell the story an intellectual migration from Central Europe to the United States. These figures sought answers to the question: why do people do the things they do and make the economic decisions they make? Malherek demonstrates how U.S. businesses channeled socialist thought for creative solutions to the practical problems of industrial design, urban planning, and consumer behavior.

Christopher Heaney describes how South American ancestors became coveted mummies, skulls, and specimens of knowledge and nationhood.

Masters of Health charts the rise of racist theories in U.S. medical schools, examining the extensive legacies of slavery in modern medicine.

Daniel Vandersommers shows how the popular zoology fostered by the National Zoo shaped American science, culture, and conservation during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Rena Selya examines the life of Nobel-winning biologist Salvador Luria, whose passion for science was equaled by his commitment to political engagement in Cold War America.

Donald L. Opitz discusses his book project, Daughters of Ceres: The Scientific Advancement of Women in Horticulture, 1870–1920 .