Alan I Marcus

Bio

Alan I Marcus is the author of The Future Is Now: Science and Technology Policy Within the United States Since 1950 (Prometheus), Building Western Civilization: From the Advent of Writing to the Age of Steam (Thomson), Cancer From Beef: The DES Controversy, Federal Food Regulation and Consumer Confidence in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press), Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origins of City Services in Cincinnati, 1819-1870 (Ohio State University Press), and Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy: Farmers, Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations, 1870-1890 (lowa State University Press), and co-author of Technology in America: A Brief History. A third edition of Technology in America (MacMillan International/Bedford St. Martin) was recently published. Two volumes, Science As Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant Universities, 1865-1930 and Service As Mandate: Land-Grant Universities and the Making of the Modern World, 1920-2015 were published (University of Alabama Press) in 2015. Marcus's Malignant Growth: Creating the Modern Cancer Research Establishment, 1875—1915 (University of Alabama Press) has just been published.

Education

• Ph.D. (History) University of Cincinnati, 1979
• M.A. (History) University of Cincinnati, 1975
• B.A. (History of Science) University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1972

Academic Career

• William L. Giles Distinguished Professor and Head of History, Mississippi State University, 2016-
• Interim Head, Chemistry, Mississippi State University, 2015-2017
• Series Editor, Nexus. New Histories of Science, Technology, the Environment, Agriculture and Medicine, University of Alabama Press, 2013-
• Professor of History and Head of Department, Mississippi State University, 2005-
• Treasurer, Agricultural History Society, 2010-
• Professor of History, Iowa State University, 1988-2005
• Associate Professor, Iowa State University, 1985-88
• Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, 1980-85
• Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Cincinnati, 1979-80
• Assistant Professor, International Training School, 1979-80
• Director, Graduate Program in the History of Technology and Science, Iowa State University, 1991-2005
• Director, Center for Historical Studies of Technology and Science, Iowa State University, 1986-2005
• Director, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for College and University Faculty, 1990, 1994
• Acting Editor, History of Technology and Science Series, Iowa State University Press, 1988-90
• Associate Director, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Teaching About the Origins and Development of American Constitutionalism, 1984
• Consultant, AAUW Women and Medicine Project, 1982
• Director, The Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati History Project, 1980
• Principal Investigator, Department of Medicine, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Environmental Protection Agency Project, 1979-80
• Principal Investigator, Cincinnati Historical Society, Allen Temple AME Church History Project, 1979
• Archivist, Archives for Medical History, Special Collections Department, University of Cincinnati, 1974

Publications

Books

• Malignant Growth: Creating the Modern Cancer Research Establishment, 1875—1915 (Universary of Alabama Press, 2018)
• Technology in America: A Brief History (with Howard P. Segal), 3rd. Ed. Revised and Expanded (McMillian International/Bedford/St. Martin, 2018)
• The Future Is Now. Science and Technology Policy in the United States Since 1950 (New York: Prometheus Books, 2007)
• Technology in America: A Brief History 2nd Ed., Revised and Expanded (Harcourt Brace and Co., 1999)
• Building Western Civilization. From the Advent of Writing to the Age of Steam (Harcourt Brace and Co., 1998; republished Pearson, 2010)
• Cancer From Beef: DES, Federal Food Regulation, and Consumer Confidence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)
• Plague of Strangers: Social Groups and the Origin of City Services in Cincinnati, 1819- 1870, (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991)
• Technology in America: A Brief History (with Howard P. Segal) (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1989)
• Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy: Farmers, Agricultural Colleges, and Experiment Stations, 1870-1890 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1985)

Edited Books

• Service as Mandate: How Land-Grant Universities Shaped the Modern World, 1920-2015 (Tuscaloosa, AL.: University of Alabama Press, 2015)
• Science as Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-grant Universities, 1865-1930 (Tuscaloosa, AL.: University of Alabama Press, forthcoming 2015)
• Engineering in a Land-Grant Context. The Past, Present, and Future of an Idea (W.Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005)
• Co-editor (with Hamilton Cravens) Health Care Policy in Contemporary America (College Park: Penn State University Press, 1997)
• Co-Editor (with David M. Katzman and Hamilton Cravens) Technical Knowledge in American Culture: Science, Technology, and Medicine in America Since the Early 1800s (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1996)
• Co-Editor (with Richard Lowitt) The United States Department of Agriculture in Historical Perspective(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)

Edited Journal Issues

• Guest Editor, Journal of Mississippi History, Special Issue on the Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station, (Fall 2013)
• Guest Co-Editor, The Historian, Special Issue on Government and Politics, (Spring 2010)
• Guest Co-Editor, Journal of Policy History, Special Issue on Health and Health Policy, (Winter 1996)
• Guest Co-Editor (with Richard Lowitt) Agricultural History, Special Issue on the United States Department of Agriculture in Historical Perspective. 64/2 (Spring 1990).
• Co-Editor (with Hamilton Cravens) of a Special Issue of American Studies on Science, Technology and Medicine in America, 30/2 (Fall 1989).
• Guest Editor and Contributor, OAH Magazine of History, Special Issue on Science and Technology. 4/2 (Spring 1989).

Selected Articles and Book Chapters

• "Science and Technology," Christopher M. Nichols and Nancy C. Unger, eds., A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, (Wiley Blackwell, February 2017): 243-255.
• (with Mark R. Finlay) "'Consumer Terrorists': Battles Over Agricultural Antibiotics in the United States and Western Europe," Agricultural History, (Vol. 90/2 (Spring 2016), 146-172.
• "The Morrill Mandate and the New Moral Mandate:The 125th Anniversary of the 1890 Morrill Land-Grant Act and Democracy's Future at Democracy's Colleges," Agricultural History, (Vol. 89/2 (Spring 2015), 247-251.
• ""Chemistry Under The Morrill Act: Agency Through Service," Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, special issue on chemistry in the land-grant movement, Vol. 38 (October 2013), 109-114.
• "The New Agricultural College and the New Agricultural History, Agricultural History, Vol. 87/4 (Fall 2013), 525-533.
• "Bill Clinton in Arkansas: Generational Politics, The Technology of Political Communication and the Permanent Campaign,"The Historian 72/2 (2010), 354-385
• "When Numbers Failed: Social Scientists, Modernity and the New Cities of 1920s and 30s," Hamilton Cravens, ed., The Great Depression: People and Perspectives (ABC-Clio, August, 2009): 165-84.
• "Would You Like Fries With That, Sir: The Evolution of Management Theories and the Rise and Fall of Total Quality Management Within the American Federal Government," Management and Organizational History (3/3), Fall/Winter 2008: 311-338
• "If All the World Were Mechanics and Farmers: American Democracy and the Formative Years of Land-Grant Colleges,"Ohio Valley History (5/1), Spring 2005: 23-37.
• "Creation of the Modern Land-Grant University: Chemical Engineering, Agricultural By-Products and the Reconceptualization of Iowa Agricultural College, 1920-1940,  Engineering in a Land-Grant Contest: Past Present and Future of an Idea (W. Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2005): 22-39
• "The Medieval Image in the Modern Mind: History and Turn-of-the-Century American Municipal Government," in Patricia Mooney-Melvin and Robert B. Fairbanks, eds., Making Sense Out of the City: Local Government, Civic Culture and Community Life in Urban America (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001): 34-56.
• "Nineteenth Century American Technology and Science: Studying Premodern Subjects in a Postmodern World," in William Barney, ed., Blackwell's Companion to Nineteenth Century America (London: Blackwell's, 2001): 333-344.
• "Sweets for the Sweet: Saccharin, Knowledge and the Contemporary Regulatory Nexus," Journal of Policy History(Winter 1996): 33-47. Reprinted in Health Care Policy in Contemporary America (College Park: Penn State University Press, 1997).
• "From Individual Practitioner to Regular Physician: Cincinnati Medical Societies and the Problem of Definition among Mid-Nineteenth Century Americans," in Technical Knowledge in American Culture: Science, Technology, and Medicine in America Since the Early 1800s (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1996): 55-70.
• "Unanticipated Aftertaste: Cancer, the Role of Science and the Question of DES Beef in Late Twentieth Century American Culture," in Technical Knowledge in American Culture: Science, Technology, and Medicine in America Since the Early 1800s (Birmingham: University of Alabama Press, 1996): 191-205.
• "National History Through Local: Social Evils and the Origins of Municipal Services in Cincinnati," in Amritjit Singh, Max J. Skidmore and Isaac Sequeira, eds., American Studies Today. An Introduction to Methods and Perspectives (New Delhi, India: Creative Books, 1995) (essay reprinted in Korea, Japan and Nigeria)
• "Setting the Standard," in Robert F. Himmelberg, ed., The Rise of Big Business and the Beginnings of Antitrust and Railroad Regulation in the Business and Government in America Since 1870 Series (New York: Garland, 1994): 203-30.
• "The Newest Knowledge of Nutrition: Wise Burroughs, DES and Modern Meat," Agricultural History 67/3 (Summer 1993): 63-82.
• "The Failure of Empowerment: The Mid-Nineteenth Century Benevolent Campaign in Cincinnati," Queen City Heritage50, No. 1 (Spring 1992): 37-50.
• "From Ehrlich to Waksman: Chemotherapy and the Seamed Web of the Past," in Beyond History of Science: Essays in Honor of Robert E. Schofield, ed. Elizabeth Garber (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 1990): 266-83.
• "Physicians Open a Can of Worms: American Nationality and Hookworm in the United States, 1893-1909," American Studies 30/2 (Fall 1989): 103-21.
• "The South's Native Foreigners: Hookworm as a Factor in Southern Distinctiveness," in Todd L. Savitt and James Harvey Young, eds., Disease and Distinctiveness in the American South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988): 79-99.
• "The Wisdom of the Body Politic: The Changing Nature of Publicly Sponsored American Agricultural Research Since the 1830s," Agricultural History 62/2 (Spring 1988): 4-26.
• "Constituents and Constituencies: An Overview of the History of Public Agricultural Research Institutions in America," in Donald F. Hadwiger and William B. Browne, eds., Public Policy and Agricultural Technology: Adversity Despite Achievement (London: MacMillan, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987): 15-30.
• "Back to the Present: Historians' Treatment of a City as a Social System During the Reign of the Idea of Community," in Howard Gillette, ed., American Urbanism: A Historiographic Review (Westport: Greenwood, 1987): 16-31.
• "From Bummer to Boss: Cincinnati's George B. Cox and the Politics of the New Order," (with Zane L. Miller) Timeline 4/4 (August/September 1987): 16-31.
• "Setting the Standard: Fertilizers, State Chemists and Early National Commercial Regulation, 1880-1887," Agricultural History 61/1 (Winter 1987): 47-73.
• "The Ivory Silo: Farmer-Agricultural College Tensions in the 1870s and 1880s," Agricultural History 60/1 (Spring 1986): 22-36.
• "From State Chemistry to State Science: The Transformation of the Idea of the Agricultural Experiment Station in America, 1875-1887," in Lawrence Busch and William Lacy, eds., The Agricultural Scientific Enterprise (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986): 3-12.
• "Am I My Brother's Keeper: Reform Judaism in the American West, Cincinnati, 1840-1870," Queen City Heritage 44/1 (Spring 1986): 3-19.
• "The Chemical Engineers of Iowa State College: Transforming Agricultural Wastes and An Institution, 1920-1940," (with Erik Lokensgard) Annals of Iowa 48/3 and 4 (Winter/Spring 1986): 177-205.
• "The City as a Social System: The Importance of Ideas," American Quarterly 37/3 (Winter 1985): 332-45.
• "Henry A. Wallace and the Development of Hybrid Corn," Annals of Iowa 47/2 (Fall 1983): 180-89
• "The Strange Career of Municipal Health Initiatives: Cincinnati and City Government in the Early Nineteenth Century,"Journal of Urban History 7/1 (November 1980): 3-29.
• The Allen Temple Story: History of a Central City African Methodist Episcopal Church (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Historical Society, 1979), pamphlet issued to commemorate the 155th anniversary of Allen Temple, A.M.E. Church of Cincinnati and its congregation's relocation, September 16, 1979.
• "Disease Prevention in America: From a Local to a National Outlook, 1880-1910," Bulletin of the History of Medicine53 (Summer 1979): 184-203.
• "Professional Revolution and Reform in the Progressive Era: Cincinnati Physicians and the City Elections of 1897 and 1900," Journal of Urban History 5/2 (February 1979): 183-207.

Honors & Awards

• William L. Giles Distinguished Professor, Mississippi State University, Spring 2016
• Fellow, Agricultural History Society, 2016
• Distinguished Humanities Scholar, Iow State University, the first so designated in the history of the institution, Spring 2000
• Chair, Organization of American Historians Program Committee for August 2000 Meeting
• ISU Science Technology and Society Grant (with Cai Guise-Richardson), 1999
• University of Cincinnati History Alumni Award, 1998
• National Science Foundation Research Grant, 1997
• National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to Direct Summer Institute for College and University Faculty, 1994
• Chair, Committee on Education, Society for the History of Technology, 1992-96
• Member, Carstensen Prize Committee, Agricultural History Society, 1992-95 (Chair, 1993)
• National Endowment of the Humanities Senior Scholar, 1992
• Hamilton County, Ohio Author of the Year, 1992
• National Science Foundation Research Grant, 1991
• College of Sciences and Humanities Faculty Incentive Grant Program Publication Support Program, 1991
• Choice's Outstanding Academic Book for 1990 Award
• President, Midwest Junto for the History of Science, 1990-91
• National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to Direct Summer Institute for College and University Faculty, 1990 Big 8 Honor Lecturer, 1989-90
• Mid-American State University Association (MASUA) Honor Lecturer, 1989-90
• Iowa State University Agricultural Bioethics Grant, 1989
• Member, Executive Committee of the Agricultural History Society, 1989-91
• USDA Publications Grant, 1988-90
• State of Iowa Biotechnology Council Grant, 1986-88
• GTE Foundation Lectureship Program Grant, 1985-86
• Sciences and Humanities Research Institute Research Grant, 1983
• Research Fellow, History of Health Sciences Library and Museum, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, 1979-80
• Taft Fellow, University of Cincinnati, 1977-78

Professional Associations

• Society for the History of Technology
• Agricultural History Society
• American Association for the History of Medicine
• History of Science Society
• Organization of American Historians
• American Historical Association