STS
Program in Science, Technology, and Society

TOP > Faculty > Faculty Bios > JoAnne Yates

Attention faculty! You can customize this page. Click here for more information


JoAnne Yates

Room
E52-544
Phone
617-253-7157
Email
jyates@mit.edu
website


Professor Yates received her B.A. from Texas Christian University and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She studies communication and information as they shape and are shaped by technologies, ideologies, and work practices over time, using both historical and rhetorical/social scientific methods. Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (1989; 1993) covered the period from 1850 to 1920.

Her current historical project focuses on the life insurance industry's adoption and use of information technology in the 20th century. In addition to her general interest in business history, she collaborates with Wanda Orlikowski on studies of communication and work practices around electronic media in contemporary organizations, focusing on genres and temporal patterns of communication.