People @ Wisconsin: Graduate Students
Michitake Aso: Broadly speaking, I am interested in the history of the environment, science, and medicine in Southeast Asia. I look forward to dealing with questions that arise at the intersections of these fields in a dissertation tentatively titled "Colonial Ecologies: Environment, Health, and Politics in French Indochina, 1890-1940". I plan to focus my research on the rubber plantations of Southern Indochina and look at how the environmental and health changes brought about by these endeavors transformed both the land and the people living on it. I also hope to investigate the post-colonial memories of rubber.
Kellen Backer: Kellen Backer works primarily on 20th century U.S. history and is pursuing a joint Ph.D. in History and History of Science. His dissertation examines how World War II shaped the history of food in the U.S. More generally, he is interested in applying methods gleaned from social and cultural histories of science, technology, and medicine to understanding the history of food.
Meridith Beck Sayre: Meridith is interested in natural history during the early modern period. She is currently researching the works of a French Jesuit who produced three works of natural history on New France during the mid- seventeenth century. More broadly speaking, she is interested in the relationship between people and the natural world and perceptions of nature in the past. She enjoys walking with her dog, listening to punk rock, and thrift store hunting in her “spare” time.
Jocelyn Bosley: Having completed her master's project in 2003 on theories of female orgasm in human and nonhuman primates, Jocelyn spent three years working with highly gifted middle school students in math, science, and--as often as possible--the history of science. As she returns to graduate study this fall, she hopes to integrate historical and philosophical approaches to explore a broad range of topics in gender, sexuality, and science. She is particularly interested in the ways in which women's sexuality has been deployed in attempts to navigate, enforce, or efface the boundary between human and nonhuman animals, from Blumenbach's anthropological treatises to such recent popular works as Leonard Shlain's Sex, Time, and Power and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's Mother Nature. When she is not reading about sex, Jocelyn enjoys Sudoku, kickboxing, and referring to herself in the third person.
Bridget Collins: Bridget studies the history of American public health, the relationships between environment and health/disease, and the history of women’s role in health care (both as providers and as patients). She completed her Master’s Paper, “Every Home Safe: Tuberculosis in Madison, WI 1908-1950,” in the Spring of 2006 and is currently preparing her preliminary fields. In her spare time she knits and reads comic books.
Dana A. Freiburger: Dana enjoys broad interests in history of science and technology situated in the United States and Japan during the past 150 years. His current research includes an examination of Catholic science education in 19thC America and the impact of scientific instruments on the physical sciences in Japan during the post-Meiji period. Please visit Dana's web site for more details and information. "Dana's web site"
Frederick W. Gibbs: Mr. Gibbs is researching the genre of medieval poison literature and what it can tell us about medieval conceptions of poison, disease, the relationship between poison and food, and medical patronage in the middle ages. Mr. Gibbs is also exploring the changing roles and values of foods and foodways in the medieval and early modern periods against the backdrop of changing attitudes and understandings of medicine in general. In an earlier life, Mr. Gibbs investigated the popularity of medieval astronomy textbooks, focusing primarily on Sacrobosco's "De Sphaera" and its use in early universities. Mr. Gibbs is also the chef/owner of Madison's most unpredictable and innovative 4-seat restaurant, chez frederic. When you visit, be aware it looks much like an apartment building. But don't be fooled--the magic happens behind door 302. Drop by for brilliant cuisine and spectacular pyrotechnics.
Daniel Huffman: Daniel's interest can usually be exicted toward most any topic, but when left to his own devices, he tends to gravitate toward the ancient and medieval world, especially his beloved Romans. His curiosity also tends to lead him to look into questions which he considers odd and unusual (e.g. 19th century popular American arguments in favor of extraterrestrial life). He is an amateur cartographer, a former bioanalytical chemist, and an all-around vaguely interesting person.
Judith Kaplan: Methods in the social and historical sciences, especially statistics and language science.
Joshua Kundert: My research in the history of technology focuses on the development of synthetic fuels in the United States and Germany between 1930-1960. My dissertation examines the question of why the United States, at the height of the Cold War, chose to base its economic and military might upon the exploitation of vulnerable middle-eastern oil, instead of developing the secure strategic alternative of coal-based synthetic fuels. This project not only deals with the technological and political aspects of energy production, but also delves into the blurry boundaries of categories like "natural," "technology," and "resource" in a transnational context.
Matthew Lavine: Matt studies popularization and popular science in America's second century. His interests include science journalism, public policy, and the role of science in utopian communities. He also has an active interest in the history of games. He is currently at work on his dissertation, "A Cultural History of Radiation in America, 1895-1945," which explores how nonscientists were exposed (in every sense of the word) to knowledge about nuclear energies in the half century between the discovery of x-rays and the first use of atomic weapons.
David Meshoulam: David entered the History of Science program after teaching science at the middle school and high school levels for four years. He originally intended to study the exchange of scientific ideas between Arabs and Europeans during the Middle Ages, but has recently taken a detour into the world of science education where he is studying the use of biographies of scientists in secondary school science textbooks. Once his Arabic gets good enough he plans to cast a wider net and study the discourse of public science education in Arab countries during the 20th century. Or he may return to study the Middle Ages. Either way, he looks forward the difficult and arduous life of a doctoral student.
Blair Nelson: Blair is working on the mid-nineteenth-century American controversy over the origin of human racial differences, especially how that debate played out in the popular religious press. Many ethnologists in Europe and America had rejected the notion of the descent of all humans from the same original couple, and argued that each human race had a separate and geographically distinct creation. Americans could be proud that even Europeans acknowledged the U. S. ethnologists lead in this field of research. But few in American's Protestant community celebrated what was an overt attack on the orthodox understanding of the unity of humankind. This became the most contented issue regarding religion and science from 1850 into the 1870s.
Scott Prinster: Scott’s interests include exploring the boundaries and interactions between what is widely acknowledged as “science” and other disciplines occupying the edges of scientific thought. This includes the interchange between religion and science, especially during the Protestant Reformation; the effects of ideology on science, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia; and the coalescence of science in the late medieval and early modern periods. "Scott’s web site"
Megan Raby:
Lynnette Regouby:
Andrew Ruis: Andrew’s interests are in the history of American medicine and public health, international health, and ancient science and medicine. His master’s thesis, “Bringing the Laboratory to the Street: The Bacteriological Diagnosis of Diphtheria in Late Nineteenth-Century New York City”, received an Honorable Mention for the Shryock Award of the American Association for the History of Medicine. His dissertation looks at the establishment of nutrition programs for children in twentieth-century America. Andrew hopes to work in health policy after completing his degree, a career that will combine his interest in social history with his love of neckties.
Gregory Strodtman:
Peter Susalla: I am interested in the history of the physical sciences, especially astronomy and cosmology in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Scott Trigg: Scott works on the history of Arabic science in the pre-modern Middle East, and is currently pursuing the Joint Ph.D. between the History and History of Science departments. His M.A. thesis looked at two Arabic medical writings on the relationship between health and the environment, particularly in the case of travel and new environs. As he prepares for the Ph.D. his general interests include the history of astronomy and planetary theory, the transmission of scientific knowledge, and the social and institutional contexts of Arabic science.
Steve Wald: Steve’s interests revolve around the history of the sciences of mind, brain, and consciousness and their bearing on historical issues of science and religion. His dissertation will offer a history of the split-brain in late-twentieth-century American thought and culture. Through this study, Steve hopes to shed light on the ways that achievements pointing toward a “science of the soul” affected discourse about the moral authority of science and its relation to rival sources of knowledge, meaning, and value in the (post)modern world. A former NSF Fellow, Steve holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from North Carolina State University and a Master of Theological Studies from the Duke Divinity School.
Amrys O. Williams: I am interested in bringing together the history of science and technology and environmental history, as well as understanding urban and rural perspectives on scientific and technological issues. My current project looks at the development of 4-H clubs in the first half of the twentieth century, focusing on ideas of modernity and of bodily and environmental health.
Shannon Withycombe: Shannon Withycombe's current project is on the tensions between motherhood and insanity in Wisconsin from 1860 to 1908. She is exploring how the identity of "mother" was constructed through the diagnosis of puerperal insanity at the State Hospital of the Insane. Her general interests include nineteenth-century women's health and sexuality, the history of the body, food, wine, and chapstick.
Anna Zeide: My interests currently lie in the areas of environmental history and the history of ecology, the history of twentieth century life sciences, the history of science education, and the history of food, biotechnology, and agriculture. And at the end of such a long list, I'm really excited about how all these different areas interact with one another, how science and environmental thinking relate to one another, how the history of science can be used to teach science in schools, the role of science in society, people's perceptions of how, why, and by whom science is done, and more!