Forum for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology

The Forum brings together scholars from across the department who share a common interest in exploring the role of science, medicine, and technology in the development of the modern world.  Our faculty, whose research ranges across historical fields and research methodology, share a commitment to facilitating the integration of science, technology, and medicine into historical study, regardless of regional or temporal specialization.  The Forum sponsors guest speakers, internal lectures, and the opportunity for intellectual exchange among faculty and students – from within the department and across the university.

Current faculty include:

Michael Bess (History of the social and ethical implications of technological change; twentieth-century European history)
Dennis Dickerson (19th & 20th Century American History and African American History labor, religion, and the U. S. civil rights movement)
Marshall Eakin (Latin American history, with emphasis on Brazil and Central America; nationalism and nation-building, history of industrialization)
Sarah E. Igo (Modern U.S. cultural, intellectual, and political history; history of the human sciences; sociology of knowledge; history of the public sphere)
Elizabeth Lunbeck (History of psychiatry and psychoanalysis; history of the human sciences; women and gender; twentieth-century US cultural and intellectual history)
Ole Molvig (History of Science, with an emphasis on the physical sciences; Popular Science; European intellectual and cultural history)
Alistair Sponsel (History of science; modern Britain and the British Empire; exploration; marine environmental history)
Matthew Ramsey (History of modern France; history of medicine, public health, and public assistance; the professions; European cultural history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries)
Ruth Rogaski (History of Qing and twentieth-century China; history of medicine and science; women and gender; nineteenth and twentieth century social and cultural history)
Arleen Tuchman (History of science and medicine; history of disease; gender and sexuality; culture and the body)

Upcoming Events

Come back to this page next month to see scheduled events. [Updated July 26, 2012.]

Graduate Study

Vanderbilt offers a wealth of opportunities for graduate study with a focus on science, medicine, and/or technology from within a traditional Ph.D. in History.  More information on the history of medicine can be found here, and on the history of science and technology here.

Undergraduate Study

Vanderbilt undergraduates interested in the history of science, medicine and technology can do so from within the history major.  Click here for a list of relevant courses.

Garland Historical Scientific Instruments Collection

The Garland Collection houses the early teaching and research instruments from Vanderbilt’s department of Physics and Astronomy.  The collection is a remarkable representation of the state-of-the-art in physics instrumentation from about 1860 through 1900.  For inquiries into the collection, please contact its curator (ole.molvig@vanderbilt.edu).