Karen Rader
I study and teach about the history of science, especially the intersections of U.S. science's many institutions with other social, cultural, and intellectual institutions. I am the author of Making Mice (Princeton UP, 2004) and the co-author of Life on Display (Chicago, 2014). I have co-edited a journal (Journal of the History of Biology, 2018-2022) and received grants and fellowships from NSF (STS and AISL), ACLS, and the Mellon Foundation. I am now researching postwar US informal and adult science education.
Phone: (804) 828-1635
Address: Department of History, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA 23284
Phone: (804) 828-1635
Address: Department of History, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA 23284
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Books by Karen Rader
https://newbooksnetwork.com/karen-a-rader-and-victoria-e-m-cain-life-on-display-revolutionizing-u-s-museums-of-science-and-natural-history-in-the-twentieth-century-u-of-chicago-press-2014-3
Papers by Karen Rader
shift for museums as both educational institutions and as institutions of research. Ultimately, it argues that debates over museums’ content and display strategies drew strength from and reinforced a profound transformation in the institutional
history of twentieth-century American science and technology: namely, the separation of research and public education. By the late 1960s, the American museum landscape had been transformed by this development. Older natural history museums competed for visitors and resources with ‘new’ style science
museums, and although both remained popular cultural institutions, neither had achieved a coherent new institutional identity because debates about the role of the museum in science continued. Thus, we suggest, in the mid-twentiethcentury natural history and science museums were more important in both the
history of biology and the history of science’s public culture than has previously been acknowledged.
https://newbooksnetwork.com/karen-a-rader-and-victoria-e-m-cain-life-on-display-revolutionizing-u-s-museums-of-science-and-natural-history-in-the-twentieth-century-u-of-chicago-press-2014-3
shift for museums as both educational institutions and as institutions of research. Ultimately, it argues that debates over museums’ content and display strategies drew strength from and reinforced a profound transformation in the institutional
history of twentieth-century American science and technology: namely, the separation of research and public education. By the late 1960s, the American museum landscape had been transformed by this development. Older natural history museums competed for visitors and resources with ‘new’ style science
museums, and although both remained popular cultural institutions, neither had achieved a coherent new institutional identity because debates about the role of the museum in science continued. Thus, we suggest, in the mid-twentiethcentury natural history and science museums were more important in both the
history of biology and the history of science’s public culture than has previously been acknowledged.