About Me, in Brief. . . . .
I am a historian of the modern United States with special
interests in the human sciences, social engineering, and therapeutic
culture. My most recent book is Kinship by Design: A History of
Adoption in the Modern United States (University of Chicago Press,
2008). I have also written two other books. One
is about the impact of psychology on public policy and culture during
and after World War II: The
Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (University
of California Press, 1995). The other is a contribution to a series
of books for young readers on Issues in Lesbian and Gay Life: Psychiatry,
Psychology, and Homosexuality (New York: Chelsea House,
1995). My work has been supported by fellowships at
Harvard Law School and Radcliffe's Bunting Institute, as well as by a
major research grant from the Science and Technology Studies Program
of the National Science Foundation. During 2011-2012, I have been awarded an ACLS Fellowship for a new research project about autism, rights, and risks.
Recent Publications. . . . .
- “Numbers as Narratives: Quantification and the Growth of the Adoption Research Industry in the United States,” Adoption and Culture (2009)
- “Supervising Spoiled Selfhood: Interpretation and Inquiry
in the History of Modern American Child Adoption,” Osiris 22 (2007)
- “Can Kinship Be Designed and Still Be Normal? The Curious Case
of Child Adoption,” in Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal:
Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity, ed.
Waltraud Ernst (London: Routledge, 2006)
- “Rules for Realness: Child Adoption in a Therapeutic Culture,”
in Therapeutic Culture: Triumph and Defeat, ed. Jonathan
B. Imber (Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004
- “Psychologism and the Child,” in The Cambridge History
of Science, vol. 7: The Modern Social Sciences, eds. Theodore
Porter and Dorothy Ross (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
- “The Paradoxical Rationalization of Modern Adoption,”
Journal of Social History 36 (Winter 2002)
- “Adoption” in Historical and Multicultural Encyclopedia
of Women’s Reproductive Rights in the United States,
ed. Judith A. Baer (Greenwood, 2002)
- “Child Adoption in a Therapeutic Culture,” Society 39 (January-February 2002)
- “Families Made by Science: Arnold Gesell and
the Technologies of Modern Child Adoption,” Isis 92 (December 2001)
- “Mental and Intelligence Testing,” Encyclopedia
of American Studies (Grolier, 2001)
- “The Difference Difference Makes: Justine Wise Polier and
Religious Matching in Twentieth-Century Child Adoption,” Religion and American Culture 10 (Winter 2000)
book reviews in American Historical Review, Bulletin of the History
of Medicine, Contemporary Psychology, The Historian, History of Psychology, Isis,
Journal of American History, Journal of the History of the Behavioral
Sciences, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Social
History, North Carolina Historical Review, Pacific Historical Review, Radical History Review, Reviews in American History,
Tikkun, Women's Review of Books
Teaching Interests. . . . .
- modern U.S. history survey
- topics in cultural and intellectual history
- post-World War II U.S. and the 1960s
- social policy, social reform, social protest
- history of human science
- history of sexuality
- history of childhood and the family
- theories of power, culture, and subjectivity
- madness and society
- history of the professions and professionalization
- social, historical, and scientific worlds of childhood
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