Department News

in

2012-2013

The department is proud to announce two additions to our faculty starting in September 2013, Adelheid Voskuhl and Etienne Benson.
     Heidi is currently a fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, on leave from her position as associate professor in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University. Her teaching and research interests include the History and Philosophy of Technology from the early modern to the modern period, Modern European History, and History and Ethics of Engineering.  Heidi received her PhD in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University in 2007, and holds graduate degrees in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University and in Physics from Carl-von-Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg. Her first book, Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self, is slated for release in April 2013 with Chicago University Press.
      Etienne is currently a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.  Etienne is a historian who works at the intersection of technology and the environment.  His historical research projects include surveillance technologies in wildlife conservation, the politics of environmental protection, and the intersection of urban technological infrastructures and the city as an environment.   Etienne received an AB in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard College in 1999 and an MA in psychology from Stanford University in 2001. He spent several years working as a science writer in Washington, DC, before enrolling in MIT's Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, where he received his Ph.D. in June 2008. His first book, Wired Wilderness, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2010.

Graduate student Allegra Giovine just received a prestigious summer internship at the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, UK. She will be working on a project entitled "The role of “steamship imperialism” in the study of empire’s wealth and resources: a look at the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company ".


Alums and jobs: Perrin Selcer (Ph.D. 2011) has accepted a tenure track position in the Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Joy Rohde (Ph.D. 2007) has accepted a tenure track position in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Assistant Professor Projit Mukharji has been awarded a CASI (Centre for Advanced Study of India) Faculty Research Grant for his new project, "Casting Genomics: Race, Caste and the History of Pharmocogenomics in India"

Doctoral student L. Ruth Rand has been awarded a Guggenheim predoctoral fellowship in residence at the National Air and Space Museum for next year.

Doctoral student Marissa Mika has received a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation. The grant will enable her to conduct further ethnographic fieldwork in the United States and Africa for her dissertation, "Experiments in Survival: Cancer, Research and Care in Uganda 1950 to the present."  The Wenner Gren Foundation is one of the major funding sources for international anthrpological research and is dedicated to the advancement of anthropology throughout the world.

HSOC Senior Lee Marcus is the recepieint of the College Alumni Society Award in Health and Societies.

STSC Senior Will Kearney is the recepient of the Society of the College Award for best senior thesis in the Department.

HSOC Senior Stephanie Lamb '13 has been selected as the undergraduate speaker for the College Commencement on Sunday, May 12, 2013.

Flagbearers for Commencement 2013: STSC--Hayley Hanafee,  HSOC--Pallavi Podapati

Undergrads elected to Phi Beta Kappa are (HSOC) Priya Srinivasan and Megan McCarthy-Alfano (STSC) Ryan Carty, Julia Eckstein, and Will Kearney

STSC senior Will Corbit has won the Charles W. Burr Book Prize 
"A prize of $750 is awarded annually to an undergraduate in the College for the most interesting and intelligently selected collection of books purchased during the past academic year and reflecting general scholastic enthusiasm and interest. Any type of book, except books required for class, may be included, but there must be a definite objective in the collection that has been consistently pursued in the acquisition. The books required for outside reading in the field of the student's major subject may be included as part of the collection."

Doctoral student Tamar Novick has won a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from SAS for the 2013-14 academic year.

Graduate Student Rosie Dent has won the School of Arts and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching by Graduate Students for the 2012-2013 academic year.  These awards are presented annually to graduate students in the arts and sciences to recognize their contributions to teaching at the undergraduate level.  The awards seek to recognize teaching that is intellectually rigorous, exceptionally coherent, and has had considerable impact on students. The award carries with it a $600 prize. 

Doctoral student L. Ruth Rand has won a Graduate Student Summer Associate Research Fellowship, working with a researcher at the RAND Corporation on ethnographic projects examining scientific management and culture within the Air Force and NASA.  She has also won a Dissertation Research Fellowship from SAS, called the Teece Fellowship.

PhD alum (2009) Christopher Jones is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California at Berkeley, and has accepted a faculty position at Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ) in Environmental Humanities, in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies starting in August 2013.

Professor M. Susan Lindee has been appointed the Janice and Julian Bers Professor of History and Sociology of Science in Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. 

Asst. Professor Projit Mukharji has just been named Martin Myerson Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies.

Associate Professor Beth Linker is featured in the "Findings" section of the Fall/Winter 2012 issue of Penn Arts & Sciences Magazine.  The article is "Positive Posture" and discusses the research for her forthcoming book, Slouch: The Rise and Fall of American Posture.

Our new graduate students for fall 2012 are Kate Dorsch,  Jesse Smith,
and Luke Messac.

Professor Jonathan Moreno published an op-ed piece in the August 31 New York Times about Clint Eastwood's "empty chair" skit at the Republican National Convention.

Associate Professor David Barnes has been selected as a Penn Humanities Forum Mellon Faculty Fellow for the 2012-13 academic year. 

Doctoral student Whitney Laemmli has been named a Dean's Scholar for 2012-2013.

Five of our doctoral students won Dissertation Research Fellowships from SAS for the 2012-13 academic year: Peter Collopy (Teece Fellowship), Rachel Elder, Samantha Muka, Tamar Novick, and Jason Oakes.

Graduate student Elaine Lefay has won the 2012 GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation.

Doctoral student Rachel Elder has one of five Dissertation Research Fellowships from SAS won by our grad students, and is also the first recipient (or first fellow) of the Mary L. Nickerson Fellowship in Neuro History, McGill University.

Doctoral student Deanna Day has won a Price Dissertation Fellowship, in residence at the Chemical Heritage Foundation for the 2012-2013 year.

Professor Jonathan Moreno has been invited to join the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s International Bioethics Committee.   Dr. Moreno is a Penn PIK professor and holds the David and Lyn Silfen University Professorship of Ethics.

Doctoral student L. Ruth Rand has been awarded a Mellon Graduate Fellowship in the Penn Humanities Forum for the 2012/2013 academic year.

Doctoral student Meggie Crnic has been awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship for Spring 2013, and was named a Andrew W. Mellon Graduate Research Fellow for Penn Humanities Forum for 2012-2013

PhD alum Kristoffer Whitney will start a two-year postdoc at the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison next fall.

2011-2012

Associate Professor Beth Linker just published "A Dangerous Curve: The Role of History in America's Scoliosis Screening Programs," American Journal of Public Health (April 2012). She is also receiving fine reviews for War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (U. Chicago Press, 2011).  H-Net Review
The book was also featured in a recent Penn Current.

Professor Susan Lindee has been appointed Associate Dean for the Social Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences, effective July 1, 2011. In this role she will oversee the Departments of Anthropology, Criminology, Economics, History and Sociology of Science, Political Science, and Sociology, as well as several research centers in the social sciences.

Matt Hersch, HSSC lecturer, curated  "Blue Sky Metropolis", an exhibit at the Huntington Library that traces the development of Southern California in tandem with the aerospace industry.  The exhibitwas  under that auspices of the Aerospace History Project at The Huntington, directed by Matt's co-curator Peter Westwick, professor of history at the University of Southern California.

Deanna Day won the H.N. Segall prize for the paper she presented at the recent Canadian Society for the History of Medicine annual conference, in a special section on reproductive health history. The award is for the best graduate student paper presented at the meeting.  The title of Deanna's paper is "The Patient Labor of Reproductive Care: The Contested History of Fertility Charting and Female Physiology," and is drawn from her dissertation research.

Doctoral candidate Joanna Radin will soon become Assistant Professor (tenure track) in the Section of the History of Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. Joanna will also have a secondary appointment in Yale University's Department of Anthropology, where she will play an active role in the creation of a new M.A. program in Medical Anthropology.

Doctoral candidate Peter Sachs Collopy has been named a SAS Dean's Scholar for 2012.  Each year the School of Arts and Sciences hosts the Levin Family Dean’s Forum to honor and recognize outstanding undergraduate and graduate students for their academic performance and intellectual promise by designating them as Dean’s Scholars.  Peter has also won a Teece Fellowship (DRF) from SAS.

Tamar Novick won a DRF (Penfield) for 2012-2013.

Doctoral candidate Jason Schwartz has been named the Harold T. Shapiro Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioethics at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, beginning September 1, 2012. The University Center for Human Values supports teaching, research, and discussion of ethics and human values throughout the curriculum and across disciplines at Princeton. Its founding director was current Penn President Amy Gutmann.

Doctoral Candidate Kristoffer Whitney, "Tangled up in Knots: An Emotional Ecology of Field Science" on ScienceDirect.com, 12 November 2011

Graduate student Whitney Laemmli has won the 2011 Robinson Prize of the Society for the History of Technology for her presentation, "The Pointe Shoe as Technology: Making Streamlined Bodies and Interchangeable Ballerinas at the New York City Ballet," at the Society's recent meeting in Cleveland.  This prize is awarded annually for the best-presented paper by an individual delivering his or her first paper at the SHOT annual meeting, with special attention by the awards committee to the effectiveness of the presentation as well as to the quality of the scholarship.Two blogs have commented on this paper, The Atlantic, and BoingBoing (see the news item for the blog URLS).

Graduate student Jen Goldsack won the Gold Medal in the Women's Lightweight Single Sculls (that's a rowing event, just Jen alone) representing the United States at the Pan American Games in Guadalajara.

Graduate Student Maxwell Rogoski (MD/PhD program) has won the 2011 GAPSA-Provost's Award for Interdisciplinary Innovation.

Doctoral Candidate Samantha Muka has received a Smithsonian Pre-Doctoral Fellowship for Fall 2011.  She is working with Pamela Henson (Smithsonian Institution Archives) and Paula Johnson (National Museum of American History).  The working title of her project is "Water Worlds:  Aquarium expertise and the amateur-professional borderlands, 1880-1930."

Undergraduates

Flagbearers for 2012 Commencement are chosen for representing the best of the major in academics and service. 
STSC:  Hilary Gerstein '12 
HSOC: Shrestha Singh '12

Rebekah Larsen '12 has won the Society of the College Prize from this department for the best honors thesis this year.

HSOC seniors have won leadership awards: Maria Bellatoni '12 won the Stephen Wise Award, Nana Yaa Misa '12 Studenhas won the James Brister Society Student Leadership Award, and Turja Chakrabarti '12 has won a Sol Feinstone Undergraduate Award.

STSC major Will Kearney '13 has won an Undergraduate Fellowship from the Penn Humanities Forum for his senior thesis project on the Canadian geophysicist Tuzo Wilson.

HSOC major Maria Bellantoni '12 has been invited to be part of two poster sessions at the 2012 American Geriatrics Society Annual Meeting in Seattle presenting her research (from her senior honors thesis) on factors affecting age-of-entry into long-term care.  One of these sessions is a special student session sponsored by the Hartford Foundation.

HSOC alum Brian Mertens '11 co-wrote an article with Dr. Susan Sorenson that was recently published in the American Journal of Public Health. The paper was originally developed in the HSOC 471 Guns and Health class in Fall of 2010.

HSOC major Shrestha Singh '12 wrote an article for the Nov/Dec 2011 Pennsylvania Gazette for their column "Notes from the Undergrad" about her work documenting the lives of homeless women who are on a running team.  The team is part of a program called "Back on My Feet" that promotes running as a tool of empowerment. Read her article at this link.