Benjamin R. Cohen
Notes from the Ground was published in paperback in 2011 (to accompany the 2009 hardback). The book examines the cultural conditions that brought agriculture and science together in nineteenth-century America. MIT published my co-edited book, Technoscience and Environmental Justice: Expert Cultures in a Grassroots Movement, also in 2011.
My current research project, “The 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. The work-in-progress uses 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 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 17, 2013
“Items from the NYT ‘Meh List’ or Things in Front of Me Right Now?” new at McSweeney’s
June 8, 2013
Workshop at Union College on Engineering and Liberal Education
May 23, 2013
Final mapping page for SP13’s “Technology & Nature” (EGRS/EVST 373) is available here.
May 20, 2013
Final projects for 2013’s Capstone Seminar on Engineering and Society (EGRS 451) are available at the class website.
May 7, 2013
“The Confidence Economy: An Interview with T.J. Jackson Lears,” at Public Books
April 17, 2013
Favorite Poem Day at Lafayette -- I read this one
April 15, 2013
Screening of A Place at the Table, 7 pm, Hugel Hall
April 4, 2013
“Cottonseed, Gilded Age Food, and Angst for the Natural,” at the ASEH meeting in Toronto
April 2, 2013
Roundtable review of Notes from the Ground, at H-Environment
© 2010-2013 | B.R. Cohen
Welcome. I am an assistant professor in the Engineering Studies and Environmental Studies Programs 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. I’m also, as it were, a writer at various non-academic outlets. [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