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STS
Program in Science,
Technology, and Society
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Rosalind Williams
Rosalind Williams attended Wellesley College and received degrees
from Harvard University (B.A., History and Literature), the
University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Modern European
History) and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Ph.D.,
History). Her first book, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late
Nineteenth-Century France (University of California, 1982),
explores the complicated relations between technological change,
cultural values, and marketing techniques at a critical moment in
the development of modern consumer society. Her next book, Notes on
the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the
Imagination (MIT Press, 1990), explores the implications for human
life in the transition from a predominantly natural to a
predominantly built environment. As a cultural historian of
technology, she has also considered the implications of this
transition in studies of Lewis Mumford, Jules Romains,
Enlightenment thinkers, and the issue of technological determinism.
Her latest book, Retooling: A Historian Confronts Technological
Change (MIT Press, 2002) draws upon her experiences as a historian
and MIT dean to comment upon our "technological age." Her next book
will use literary texts to examine experiences of the world in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, when global systems of
transportation and communication began to affect those experiences
in significant and complicated ways.
Professor Williams came to MIT in 1980 as a research fellow in the
Program in Science, Technology, and Society. In 1982 she joined the
Writing Program (now the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies)
as a lecturer. In 1990 she was named Class of 1922 Career
Development Professor, and in 1995 she was named the Robert M.
Metcalfe Professor of Writing. From 1991 to 1993 she served as
Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty, and from 1995 to 2000 as Dean
of Students and Undergraduate Education. In 2001-02 she served as
Director of Graduate Studies in the Program in Science, Technology,
and Society, and in July 2002 she become head of the Program in
Science, Technology, and Society.
Her main professional affiliation outside of MIT is the Society for
the History of Technology (SHOT), where she has served on and
chaired a number of committees. In 2002 she was named as
vice-president and president of SHOT.
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