Benjamin R. Cohen
Professor of Engineering Studies
cohenb@lafayette.edu
(610) 330-3058
304 AEC
Teaching interests: science and technology studies; history of science, technology, and the environment; environmental studies; engineering and environmental ethics and justice
Research interests: environmental history; history of science and technology; food and agrarian studies; environmental ethics, justice, and policy; relationships between science, technology and nature; technology and art; literature and science
Selected publications:
Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil and Society in the American Countryside, Yale University Press (2009).Technoscience and Environmental Justice: Expert Cultures in a Grassroots Movement [co-edited with Gwen Ottinger], MIT Press (2011).
“Science, Technology and Society [STS] and Ethics,” co-authored with Steve Cutcliffe (Lehigh U.), Volume 2 of the Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (MacMillan Press) [in press]
“The Historical Production (and Consumption) of Unsustainability: Technology, Policy, and Culture,” The Hedgehog Review 14.2 (Summer 2012): 37-52
“Environmentally Just Transformations of Expert Cultures: Toward the Theory and Practice of a Renewed Science and Engineering,” Environmental Justice 5 (2012): 158-163 [co-authored with G. Ottinger]“Analysis as Border Patrol: Chemists along the Boundary between Pure Food and Real Adulteration,” Endeavour 35 (2011).
“The Moral Basis of Soil Science and Geology: What Antebellum Farmers Knew and Why Anyone Cared,” Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 35 (2010): 860-867.
“Three Peasants on Their Way to a Meal: Representing Environmental Intervention from Millet’s The Gleaners to Macaroni,” Environmental History, 14 (October 2009): 744-752.
“The Once and Future Georgic: Agricultural Practice, Environmental Knowledge, and the Place for an Ethic of Experience,” Agriculture and Human Values 26 (3) (2009): 153-165.
Honors: Digital Humanities Research Grant, 2013-14 [Lafayette College]; ARC Research Grant, 2013-14 [Lafayette College]; R. K. Mellon Fellowship, 2012-13 [Lafayette College]; Information Literacy Grant, 2012 [Lafayette College]; NSF Scholar’s Award, #0924932, 2009-2011; Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Faculty Fellowship, Charlottesville, VA, 2010-2011; Hagley Museum and Library, Research Grant, 2010; Smithsonian Research Fellowship, 2009
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