This course explores changing uses of visual media (drawings, etchings, sketches, photographs, diagrams, X Ray images, computer-generated images, film, social media) in the life sciences and medicine from the late Renaissance to the present day.
Tucker, “Popularizing the Cosmos: Pedagogies of Science and Society in Anton Pannekoek’s Life and Work,” Ch. 9 in Chaokang Tai, Bart van der Steen, and Jeroen van Dongen (eds), Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960): Ways of Viewing Science and Society (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 175-197. [Open Access] My chapter is available Read more…
In this op-ed, I examine similarities between President Donald Trump and P.T. Barnum (1810-1891), both entertainment moguls and public figures, as well as icons of populism, capitalism, and democracy. As Barnum biographer Terence Whalen notes, he “inflicted himself upon a surprisingly willing public in a wide variety of roles” and Read more…
The 19th century Victorian obsession with a variety of pseudosciences extended to the study of love, sex, and romance. “One of the great myths about the Victorian age [was] that it was sexually repressive; on the contrary, Victorian society was obsessed with sexual reform, heterosexual and homosexual love, lust, and Read more…
In an essay co-authored with Aria Danaparamita, I write about the decision by the British Museum to lend Russia one of the most esteemed vestiges of Western art and civilization: the Parthenon marbles. We explore the long-standing role of art in cross-cultural negotiations and political dialogue. Read more in The Read more…
In this op-ed, I discuss the roots in medieval science of Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s misguided assertion that the female body will try to “shut that whole thing down” in the case of “legitimate rape.” I examine different views of reproduction from the Middle Ages through the 19th century. Read more…
