Benjamin R. Cohen
Yale Press published a paperback edition of Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil & Society in the American Countryside in September 2011 (to accompany the 2009 hardback). The book examines the cultural conditions that brought agriculture and science together in nineteenth-century America. [Find more information and links to reviews here.]
My current research project, “The Moral Landscape of Adulteration: Cheating on Nature in the Age of Industrialized Food,” is a study of food purity, environmental change, and cultural values of authenticity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In it, I use debates about adulteration—contaminated or corrupted food, primarily—to examine how industrial practices have challenged cultural ideas of “nature” and “natural” and how those challenges resulted in new science-based environmental regulation. Two recent publications offer further introductions to the project, one an academic article in Endeavour, “Analysis as Border Patrol,” the other an essay at The Morning News, “Trust Me.”
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June 6-7, 2012
“Citizenship and the Good World” conference at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Charlottesville, VA
April 23, 2012
“Questions about Fruits and Labors,” a brownbag lunch discussion on Food Justice, 12 pm, at Lafayette
April 13, 2012
New review of Technoscience and EJ--”a valuable resource”--in Organization & Environment
April 12, 2012
Second speaker in Lafayette’s Forum on Technology and the Liberal Arts:
M. McCaughey, 7 pm
March 30, 2012
“Honesty, Serendipity, and the Spice Mill,” at the Hagley Museum
March 28, 2012
“Farms, Fields, and Forests” at ASEH Conference, Madison, WI
March 23, 2012
Great new review of Technoscience and EJ in Chemical Heritage Magazine
© 2010 | B.R. Cohen
Welcome. I am an assistant professor in the Engineering Studies Program at Lafayette College in Easton, PA. (From 2005-2011, I worked in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society [STS] at the University of Virginia.) Holding STS, history, and environmental studies together, my interests sit at the intersection of the histories of science, technology, and the environment, with particular attention to industrial agriculture from the 19th century to today. [more here]
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"The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it." A.S. Byatt