June 19 | Toward a History of the Life History - seminar Dr. Rebecca Lemov (Harvard University)

The Center for Historical Culture (EUR) welcomes a speaker on the Histories of Social and Human Sciences, dr. Rebecca Lemov. Lemov is associate professor History of Science at Harvard University.

Lemov will present work from her forthcoming book Database of Dreams: Social Science's Archive of How to Be Human. This book project examines efforts, from the 1940s through the 1960s, to gather social and psychological data, at the cusp of what is now called the "Information Revolution".

In order to proceed, social scientists pioneered a range of new tools and methodologies, including the projective test, the micro-published archive, the structured interview, and other methodically honed means for collecting and preserving "human documents" on a new scale.

About dr. Rebecca Lemov

Lemov"s work focuses on the history of the behavioral sciences in the Twentieth Century. She is especially interested in methodological innovation during the Cold War. She is the author of World as Laboratory: Experiments with Mice, Mazes, and Men (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).This was named a New York Times "Editors Choice" in 2006.

Lemov was educated at Yale University (BA, English Literature) and  University of California, Berkeley (PhD, Cultural anthropology).

A paper will be circulated in advance of the seminar. If you wish to attend the meeting, please contact dr. Robbert-Jan Adriaansen (adriaansen@eshcc.eur.nl).