Faculty

Hamilton Cravens

Professor

615 Ross Hall
Dept. of History
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
Phone: (515) 294-1156
Email: hcravens@iastate.edu

Education
He wanted to write history from the early age of eight years (see the photo) and at that age he was notorious for typing out history papers of at least a paragraph in length after a few minutes of research in books. (His scoutmaster, Gordon Newell, was a part-time historian of the shipping trade of Puget Sound in Washington State.) So Hamilton grew up with a love of the Pacific Northwest and of its history, and later became a historian of America and (to a lesser extent) Western Europe, and this drew him to the history of science, especially the evolutionary natural and social sciences, in America and Europe.

Ph.D., History, University of Iowa, 1969
M.A., History, University of Washington, 1962
B.A., History, University of Washington, 1960
 
Academic Career
Professor of History, Iowa State University, 1980-(instructor to associate professor, 1968-1973)

George Bancroft Professor of American History, Goettingen University, Germany, 1988-1989 (Distinguished Fulbright Professorship in American history)

Appointments at the Ohio State University, the University of Washington, the University of Maryland, and the University of California

J. W. Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies, Bonn, Cologne, and Heidelberg Universities, summer semester (March-July) 1997

Research and Teaching Interests
American Cultural and Intellectual History
History of Science and Technology, with an emphasis in Social, Behavioral, Natural, Life, and Material Sciences
 
Selected Publications
Designing Humanity: The Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1776-2001. contracted book, in final stages of writing; contract with Johns Hopkins University Press.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, edited with an introduction, (New York: forthcoming; Oct. 2004) Barnes and Noble paperback.

The Social Sciences Go To Washington: The Politics of Knowledge in the Postmodern Era, Editor and contributor, 2003, Rutgers University Press

Health Care Policy in Contemporary America, Alan I. Marcus and Hamilton Cravens, eds., (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997): 5-32.
 
ed., with A I Marcus, David M. Katzman, Technical Knowledge in American Culture (University of Alabama Press, 1996)
 
Before Head Start: The Iowa Station and America's Children (University of North Carolina Press, 1993)
 
The Triumph of Evolution: The Heredity-Environment Controversy, 1900-1941 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, 1988)
 
ed., Ideas in American Culture (Iowa State University Press, 1982)

More than sixty articles or chapters in books, about forty conference papers and comments, about forty invited seminars or talks at universities or research institutes in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia, and more than one hundred book reviews in various historical and scientific journals.
 
Courses Taught
United States Survey
Social and Cultural History of American People
History of American Thought
History of Social and Behavioral Sciences
History of American Science
 
Graduate Seminars and Proseminars in:
General History of Technology
20th Century American History
American Science
Early 20th Century Science
19th and 20th Century American History
 
Grants,Scholars, Fellows
Ford Foundation Fellow, 1960-1961
University of Iowa Fellow, 1964-1965
NEH Summer Fellow, 1974
NSF Grants, 1978, 1979, 1980-1983
Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, 1986
Associate Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center, 1986
Distinguished Fulbright Professor, Georg-August Universitaet, Goettingen, Germany, 1988-1989
Fellow, Davis Humanities Center, University of California, Davis, 1990-1992
Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley, 1990-1992 J. W. Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies, Bonn, Cologne, and Heidelberg Universities, Germany, 1997
Visiting Scholar, Max-Planck-Institut Fuer Geschichte, Goettingen, Germany, 1997
Scholar in Residence, Short-Term Residencies for U.S. Historians in Japanese Universities, Organization of American Historians and Japanese American Studies Association, Tohoku University, Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, October, 1998

Professional Activity
American Historical Association
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
History of Science Society
American Studies Association
American Association for the History of Medicine, Inc.
Agricultural History Society
Midwest Junto for the History of Science
The Historical Society