work-in-progress
In my current research, I am studying the forms that scientific knowledge take "in the American vernacular," from an interdisciplinary viewpoint that draws on American studies, United States history, sociology, philosophy, and literary analysis in addition to the history of science and technology. This vernacular scientific realm is front and center in my book-length project, Science in the American Vernacular: Improvisations in Natural History across the 20th Century, which examines the existence of a cross-disciplinary discourse that has constituted an "intellectual commons" where researchers and the wider public have developed ideas at odds with the scientific establishment about epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the search for scientific knowledge. In particular, I am looking at individuals who participated in this vernacular realm by using natural history models to improvise new understandings of the natural and the social worlds, of scientific practice, and of the relationship between science and the polity. The scientific figures to be examined come from biology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. This research is supported by an investigator grant from the National Science Foundation.

In 2001-2002 I pursued these themes into the nineteenth century, as a Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. In this project, The Children’s Republic of Science in Nineteenth-Century America: Lessons in Natural Knowledge for the Rising Generations of a New Nation, I continued my mapping of the significance of natural history models as a source of intellectual, social, and political critique, particularly in regard to whether nature should be understood as conforming to a sedate and orderly logical empiricism, or instead characterized in more unruly terms compatible with a radically empirical stance.

I first discussed these themes in my dissertation, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1997 as Rebels within the Ranks: Psychologists’ Critique of Scientific Authority and Democratic Realities in New Deal America. (An abstract and online chapter is available at the Cambridge University Press website.)
 

selected publications
"The Children’s Republic of Science in the Antebellum Literature of Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Jacob Abbott," Osiris, vol. 24 (forthcoming 2009)

(with Karen Rader) "Science in the Everyday World: Why Perspectives in the History of Science Matter," Isis, 2008 (June), vol. 99 (forthcoming)

"Diversity and Its Discontents: Scientific Surveys and the Creation of the Twentieth-Century Numeric American," Reviews in American History, 2007 (December), 35:599-605

"Redesigning the Engineering Mind: The Revelations of the Arcturus IV Science Fiction Project at mid-century MIT," Science, Technology & Society Curriculum Newsletter, Spring 2006, pp. 1-7. > go to article

"Knowledge Held in Common: The Tales of Luther Burbank and Science in the American Vernacular," Isis, 2001, 92:484-516
> abstract

"'Mapping the New Mental World Created by Radio'" Media Messages, Cultural Politics, and Cantril & Allport's The Psychology of Radio," Journal of Social Issues, 1998, 54:7-27
> go to article

Rebels within the Ranks: Psychologists' Critique of Scientific Authority and Democratic Realities in New Deal America (Cambridge University Press, 1997)  > abstract & sample chapter

selected presentations

"'There Was a Child Went Forth Everyday': The Natural World as a Republican Nursery in the Antebellum Literature of Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Jacob Abbott" || American Antiquarian Society / November 2008

"Portraying the 'Intimate Scientist' in 20th-century America: The Pushback in Popular Culture Against Scientific Arrogance" /  UC Berkeley History of Science and Technology Colloquium Series, May 2008 > abstract

"Making Sense of Science: Views from within the ‘Intellectual Commons’ of Popular Culture" || Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Dibner Institute and Arizona State University Summer Seminar Workshop / May 2007

"What Have We To Do With Mr. Everyman, or He With Us?" Reflections on Professionalism, the Public, and the Digital Age
> go to presentation ||  Plenary Session on "The Public Presentation of Science and Technology" for the Joint Meeting of the History of Science Society and the Society for the History of Technology (with Roger Launius, NASA and Svante Lindqvist, the Nobel Museum) / February 2005

"Peter Parley as a Scientific American: Creating an Indigenous Literature for the Children's Republic of Science" (History of Science Society Annual Meeting, November 2002 and UC Davis, 2004)  > abstract

"'Lessons from Nature's Open Book': The Children's Republic of Science in the Antebellum Literature of Samuel Griswold Goodrich and Jacob Abbott" (Harvard University, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History / 2002)   > project proposal

"Psychological Innovations, Historical Conventions, and the Politics of Memory" (Mary Whiton Calkins Lecture, American Psychological Association Annual Meeting / 2000)

Jesting in Earnest: Radically Empiricist Critiques of Scientific Piety (Society for Literature and Science / 1999) 

Varieties of Historiographic Experience: Writing Intellectual
and Cultural Histories of American Science (History of Science Society / 1999)

graduate research supervised

completed dissertations
Kimberly Perez (Ph.D., 2006) Fancy and Imagination: Cultivating Sympathy and Envisioning the Natural World for the Modern Child
current job: asst. professor, fort hayes state university, kansas

dissertations and master's theses in progress
Cornelia Lambert (Ph.D. exp. spr. 2009) "Living Machines": Robert Owen, the Worker's Body, and the Formation of Human Character, 1800-1830

Kate Sheppard (Ph.D. exp. spr. 2010) "A Life Without a Single Adventure": Margaret Murray and the History of Egyptology in Britain

Lisa Torres (M.A., 2008) Caroline Herschel: A Reexamination

completed master's theses
Kate Sheppard (M.A., 2006) "You Call this Archaeology?" Flinders Petrie and Eugenics

Natalie Peck (M.A., 2002) "The Perfect Socialism": The Social Philosophy of Anna Botsford Comstock in the Nature Study Movement

Cheryl Smith (M.A., 2000) "Learning About Common Things": Conceptions and Uses of Science in the Juvenile Literature of Jacob Abbott