About the Program
Coordinators
- Professor James Delbourgo, Rutgers-New Brunswick,
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Professor Neil Maher, NJIT/Rutgers-Newark,
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The graduate program in Science, Technology, Environment, and Health (STEH), one of several transnational areas of concentration in the History Ph.D. program, brings together faculty from each of the Rutgers campuses (New Brunswick, Newark, and Camden), NJIT and related centers, including the Thomas Edison Papers.
The STEH program draws Ph.D. students from all areas of historical study. It encourages students to develop a thematic expertise in environmental transformations, science and technology in society, and the histories of health and disease by investigating their social meanings, political and social histories, and their national and transnational contexts. Rather than a specialized or self-contained history of science or history of medicine program, STEH encourages graduate students to think across traditional subject boundaries and connect their interests in STEH to larger historical questions as part of the broader curriculum offered by the History Department. Recent STEH graduate students currently hold tenure-track positions at Virginia Tech, the University of Utah, and Queens College of the City of New York, and have been awarded postdoctoral fellowships at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs and the Center for Health and Wellbeing, and Birkbeck, University of London.
Students pursuing a major or minor field in STEH will have the opportunity to take colloquia that integrate the subfields of the history of science, history of technology, environmental history, and history of medicine. We aim to offer at least one course in each subfield in any two-year cycle. Independent studies with individual professors can also be taken for credit as can courses at neighboring schools, including Princeton, NYU, Columbia and Penn, as well as Rutgers Newark and Camden. Nationally, regionally and globally framed approaches are all welcome. Recent colloquia have included significant interplay with the department’s program in global history and include early modern science in Atlantic and global perspective; the history of energy; and collecting, race and museums. Students will be able to count other non-STEH courses (e.g., those listed in global history) toward the major or minor with faculty approval, provided that the content is relevant to STEH.
Past events showcasing the innovative work of STEH faculty and graduate students at Rutgers include the following:
- A three-year seminar at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis on Networks of Exchange: Mobilities of Knowledge in a Globalized World, co-directed by James Delbourgo and Toby Jones from 2012-2015. http://rcha.rutgers.edu/past-projects/networks-of-exchange/project-description
- The “Natura” Graduate Student Working Group (English and History): http://britishstudies.rutgers.edu/working-groups/natura
- The 13th annual Workshop for Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Science (WHEATS), organized by Jamie Pietruska and 10 graduate students, will be hosted by Rutgers for the first time in Fall 2016.
STEH Coursework Requirements
All students are expected to complete the coursework credit requirements as specified.
Major field in STEH
Students majoring in STEH are required to take a minimum of six courses as described below:
Minor field in STEH
A Minor Field in STEH requires two Colloquia.
STEH Qualifying Exams
The STEH major field exam consists of 2 sets of questions. The dissertation advisor and one other member of the STEH caucus (as determined by the student’s interests) will serve as major field examiners. The format of the exam is take-home/oral, with traditional exam questions. Students may take 1 week (7 days) maximum to complete the take-home exam but may finish sooner if they choose. The oral component of the exam will be a conversation, rather than a formal defense, of approximately 30 minutes to an hour that takes place within 2 weeks after the exam and is designed as an opportunity for an interactive discussion between the student and the examiners. The oral component is meant to serve as the culminating event in the series of conversations that have already occurred during the exam prep meetings. In keeping with departmental timeframes, students should take their exams in their third year (and ideally in either October or February). Students are required to take the Dissertation Prospectus Workshop (or equivalent) in Spring of that year.
The STEH minor field exam consists of 1 set of questions. A member of the STEH caucus (as determined by the student’s interests) will serve as the minor field examiner. The format of the exam is take-home/oral, with either traditional exam questions or an annotated syllabus, depending on the student’s own goals and determined in consultation with the examiner. Students may take 1 week (7 days) maximum to complete the take-home exam but may finish sooner if they choose. In keeping with departmental timeframes, students should take their exams in their third year (and ideally in either October or February). Students are required to take the Dissertation Prospectus Workshop (orequivalent) in Spring of that year.
Faculty Participating in the STEH Program
NEW BRUNSWICK
Jack Bouchard
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh
Environmental history, Atlantic history, Early Modern European History
Barbara Cooper
Professor of History
Ph.D., Boston University
History of Motherhood, Fertility, Reproduction, West Africa
James Delbourgo
Distinguished Professor of History
Ph.D., Columbia
Atlantic world; early modern science; global exchanges; history of collecting and museums; seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Leah DeVun
Associate Professor
Ph.D., Columbia
Medieval and Renaissance; science, gender and sexuality
Paul Israel
Director and General Editor, The Thomas Edison Papers
Ph.D., Rutgers
Innovation and Intellectual Property; American Social History
Toby Jones
Associate Professor of History and Director, Global and Comparative History Master's Degree Program
Ph.D., Stanford
Middle East, Global Technoscience, Environment
Elaine LaFay
Assistant Professor
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Environmental history, 19th Century US history
Xun Liu
Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Southern California
Religion, Medicine, and Material Culture in China
Jamie Pietruska
Associate Professor
Ph.D., MIT
Knowledge infrastructures, Envirotech, American cultural history
Johanna Schoen
Professor of History
Ph.D., University of North Carolina
History of women and medicine, history of reproduction rights, history of sexuality
NEWARK/NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Neil Maher
NJIT Professor and Graduate History Coordinator of the Concentration in History of Technology, Environment and Medicine
Ph.D., NYU
Environmental History; Social and Political History
Stephen Pemberton
NJIT Associate Professor and Chair
Ph.D., UNC Chapel Hill
Medicine, Biomedical Science & Technology, Health and Disease
Richard Sher
NJIT Distinguished Professor
Ph.D., Chicago
Technology, Printing and Communication
CAMDEN
Janet Golden
Professor of History
Ph.D., Boston University
Pediatrics; Women and Medicine in America
Margaret Marsh
Distinguished Professor of History and University Professor Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, New Brunswick
Ph.D., Rutgers
Reproductive Medicine and Technology; Women's History
Scholarly and Funding Resources
- Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology https://library.si.edu/libraries/dibner-library-history-science-and-technology
- Chemical Heritage Foundation https://www.chemheritage.org/
- Columbia Center for Science and Society http://nychistoryofscience.squarespace.com/about/
- Columbia University Health Sciences Library, Archives and Special Collections http://library.cumc.columbia.edu/
- Hagley Museum and Library http://www.hagley.org/
- H-Environment https://networks.h-net.org/h-environment
- H-Rural https://networks.h-net.org/h-rural
- H-Sci-Med-Tech https://networks.h-net.org/h-sci-med-tech
- Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation http://invention.si.edu/
- Max Planck Institute for the History of Science http://www.mpg.de/150889/wissenschaftsgeschichte
- New York Academy of Medicine http://www.nyam.org/
- NYC History of Science Working Group http://www.nychistoryofscience.com/
- PACHS: Philadelphia Center for the History of Science http://www.pachs.net/
- Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society http://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/index.html
- The Thomas Edison Papers http://edison.rutgers.edu/
- Wellcome Library http://wellcomelibrary.org/
Links to Professional Organizations
Science
- HSS: History of Science Society http://hssonline.org/
- BSHS: British Society for the History of Science http://www.bshs.org.uk/
- Society for Social Studies of Science http://4sonline.org/
Technology
- SHOT: Society for the History of Technology http://www.historyoftechnology.org/
- ICOHTEC: International Committee for the History of Technology http://www.icohtec.org/
Environment
- ASEH: American Society for Environmental History http://aseh.net/
- ESEH: European Society for Environmental History http://eseh.org/
- AHS: Agricultural History Society http://www.aghistorysociety.org/
Health
- American Association for the History of Medicine http://www.histmed.org/
- Society for the Social History of Medicine https://sshm.org/