Message from SHC Director
Dear Colleagues,
Happy Summer Solstice! I hope you’re staying cool on this unseasonably warm week. I write to share announcements and news from our faculty and graduate affiliates.
This was a year of many highlights for SHC: a slew of lectures on sound and media through the Klopsteg series, with talks on synthetic speech, free speech, speech recognition, “voiceprints” and policing, cochlear implants, sound recording, and the global production of wax; a co-sponsored lecture by Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, on the promises and perils of artificial intelligence; and a visit from our own Moya Bailey, who gave us a preview of her forthcoming documentary on misogynoir in medicine.
With the doctoral colloquium, coordinated by Hugh Milner, we discussed the concept of risk in science studies and the post-apocalyptic fiction of Octavia Butler; workshopped writing by Lauren Cole (History) and Michelle Lee (Sociology); and toured Northwestern’s Dearborn Observatory—with memorable views of Northern Hemisphere star clusters on a cool spring evening.
My three-year term as director of SHC comes to an end this summer. As I reflect on the experience, I’m grateful for the many experts who helped us gather safely during Covid, including members of our community: Mellon postdoctoral fellows Santiago Molina, Tess Lanzarotta, Shireen Hamza, and Ben Lindquist; graduate coordinators Juan Fernando Leon, Austin Jenkins, and Hugh Milner; and Janet Hundrieser, who each year brings uncommon enthusiasm to her work administering a complex program. Special thanks to the members of SHC’s advisory committee over the years, and to Sokhieng Au for reprising her role as Director of Undergraduate Studies this year. We’re fortunate to work with some of the most energetic and curious undergraduate students on campus.
On September 1, I will pass the baton back to Ken Alder, who has graciously agreed to return to direct SHC for the 2024-2025 year. I am excited to see what he has planned next season.
In conclusion, I offer this partial list of achievements by our faculty and graduate affiliates and invite you to be in touch with questions, concerns, or suggestions. Have a restful summer break!
Warmly,
Paul Ramírez
Faculty News
Lydia Barnett (History) published “Eco-Prospecting in Early Modern Wetlands” in the September 2023 issue of Isis.
Pablo Boczkowski (Communication) was awarded the Career Achievement Award by the Communications, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association. His book Abundance: On the Experience of Living in a World of Information Plenty received the 2024 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture from the Media Ecology Association.
Steve Epstein (Sociology) lectured at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Robert and Jean Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies on “The Quest for Sexual Health.”
Ray Fouché (Communication) convened a panel of the Principal Investigators of the DISCO Network, a collaborative, intergenerational research group dedicated to analyzing digital technology, race, disability, sexuality, and gender.
Daniel Immerwahr (History) received the Organization of American Historians 2024 Binkley-Stephenson Award for the best article published in the Journal of American History for his “Burning Down the House: Slavery and Arson in America.”
Paul Ramirez (History) will be a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center in 2024-2025.
Rebecca Seligman (Anthropology) will be a fellow at the Kaplan Humanities Institute in 2024-2025.
Nick Winters (Classics) delivered lectures on the histories of sundials and theriac at Northwestern.
Keith Woodhouse (History) received Weinberg College’s E. LeRoy Hall Teaching Award.
Graduate News
Chernoh Bah (History) has been awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship with the Africa Initiative at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Colin Bos (History) has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in the Program in African Studies at Princeton University’s Institute for International and Regional Studies.
John Branch (History) received a Weinberg Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award.
Lauren Cole (History) was awarded a 12-month dissertation fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to conduct research on networks of medical knowledge in medieval Germany in 2024-25.
Clay Davis (Sociology) published “The routinization of lay expertise: A diachronic account of the invention and stabilization of an open-source artificial pancreas” in Social Studies of Science.
Michelle Lee (Sociology) was selected as part of the 2024-2025 cohort of the ICDE Fellowship at the Institute of the Cooperative Digital Economy at the New School.
Xi Wang (Sociology) will present work at the 119th meeting of the American Sociological Association in Montreal, for which she has received an International Research Travel Award from the Buffett Institute.
Devin Wiggs (Sociology) will be Assistant Professor of Labor Relations at Cornell University ILR School (School of Industrial and Labor Relations) beginning in the fall.