1961/1981 Human Spaceflight: BIOGRAPHIES
The conference has ended
Day 1:
Michael F. Robinson (Keynote)
Michael Robinson is an associate professor of
history at Hillyer College, University of Hartford.
His work focuses on the history of scientific exploration. His book The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and
American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) won the 2008
Book Prize from the Forum of the History of Science in America. He writes a
blog about science, history, and exploration called Time to Eat the Dogs. He is
currently working on a book about the cultural history of exploration in
America.
Alexander C.T. Geppert
Dr.
Alexander C.T. Geppert directs
the Emmy Noether Research Group "The Future in
the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial
Life in the Twentieth Century" at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin. He received his PhD from the European University Institute
in Florence in 2004, and has since held various long-term fellowships at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences
Sociales in Paris, the German Historical Institute in
London, the IFK Internationales Forschungszentrum
Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna, the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut
in Essen, and at Harvard University. Recent book publications include Fleeting Cities: Imperial Expositions in
Fin-de-siècle Europe (Basingstoke/New York 2010); New Dangerous
Liaisons: Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century
(Oxford/New York 2010, co-ed.); Wunder: Poetik und Politik des Staunens im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin 2011, co-ed.); as well as Imagining Outer Space: European Astroculture in the Twentieth Century (New
York/Basingstoke, forthcoming 2011, ed.). At present he is writing a book on the
cultural history of outer space in the European imagination of the twentieth
century.
James Spiller
James Spiller received his Ph.D. in American History from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999. He has taught the histories
of American science, technology, and environment, and 20th century American
culture and economics at The College at Brockport, SUNY since 2000. He is
Associate Professor of History and, since January 2010, Associate Dean of
Graduate Education and Faculty Scholarship. He is finishing a manuscript
on the cultural politics of U.S. space and Antarctic exploration titled
"Frontiers for the American Century: Outer Space, Antarctica, and U.S.
Cold War Nationalism."
Steve Dick
Steven J. Dick served as the NASA Chief Historian
and Director of the NASA History Office from 2003-2009. Prior to that he worked as
an astronomer and historian of science at the U. S. Naval Observatory in
Washington, D.C. for 24 years. He obtained his B.S. in astrophysics
(1971), and MA and PhD (1977) in history and philosophy of science from Indiana
University. Among his books are The Biological
Universe (1996), Life on Other Worlds
(1998), and (with James Strick) The Living Universe: NASA and
the Development of Astrobiology (2004).
He also served as editor of Societal
Impact of Spaceflight (NASA SP 4801, 2007), NASA’s First 50 Years: Historical Perspectives (NASA SP-2010-4704),
and with Mark Lupisella, Cosmos and Culture: Cultural Evolution in a Cosmic Context
(2009). Dr. Dick is the recipient of the
NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Medal,
the NASA Group Achievement Award for his role in NASA’s multidisciplinary
program in astrobiology, the NASA Group Achievement Award for the book America in Space, and the 2006 LeRoy E. Doggett Prize for Historical Astronomy of the
American Astronomical Society. He has
served as Chairman of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American
Astronomical Society, as President of the History of Astronomy Commission of
the International Astronomical Union, and as President of the Philosophical Society
of Washington. In 2009 the International Astronomical designated minor planet
6544 stevendick in his honor.
Margaret A. Weitekamp
Margaret
A. Weitekamp, Ph.D., is a curator in the Division of Space History at the
Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. She oversees over 4000 individual
pieces of space memorabilia and space science fiction objects, including toys
and games, clothing and stamps, medals and awards, and buttons and pins, as
well as comics and trading cards. Recently, she acquired for the Smithsonian an
eight-foot lighted turning star from Astroland, the
space-themed amusement park in Coney Island, Brooklyn that opened in 1962 and
ceased operations in 2008. She is the
author of Right Stuff, Wrong Sex:
America’s First Women in Space Program (2004), which won the Eugene M. Emme Award for Astronautical
Literature given by the American Astronautical
Society. She earned her B.A. at the
University of Pittsburgh and her Ph.D. at Cornell University.
Andrew Jenks
Dr. Andrew Jenks, an Associate Professor of history
at California State University, Long Beach, received his Ph.D. in history from
Stanford University. He is the author of Russia in a Box: Art and Identity in
an Age of Revolution (Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), Perils of Progress:
Environmental Disasters in the Twentieth Century (Pearson, 2010), and articles
in the journals Cahiers du Monde Russe, Technology
and Culture, Environmental History, Kritika as well
as numerous essays in collected editions. In addition to two essays on Gagarin
forthcoming in edited volumes with University of Pittsburgh Press and Cambridge
University Press, he also has a forthcoming biography on Gagarin entitled The
Cosmonaut Who Couldn't Stop Smiling: the Life and Legend of Yuri Gagarin.
John M. Logsdon
John
M. Logsdon is
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs at George
Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He was the
founder and from 1987-2008 Director of the Elliott School's Space Policy
Institute. He began his faculty service at GW in 1970. Dr. Logsdon is the
author of John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (2010) and The
Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (1970) and
is general editor of the eight-volume series Exploring
the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. He
has written numerous articles and reports on space policy and history, and
authored the basic article on "Space Exploration" for the most recent
edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. Dr. Logsdon is a member of the Exploration
Committee of the NASA Advisory Council. In 2003 he served as a member of the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board. He is a Fellow of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, and a member of the International Academy of
Astronautics. From September 2008 through August 2009, Dr. Logsdon held the
Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History at the Smithsonian
Institution's National Air and Space Museum.
Megan Prelinger
Megan
Prelinger is an independent scholar, library builder, artist, and naturalist.
Her research interests include technological history; space exploration; Cold
War era history; western landscape history; aquatic avian species;
nature–culture interface; and the social structure of access to cultural
history. She is co-founder and architect of information design of the Prelinger
Library, an independent, appropriation-friendly research library in San
Francisco that has been open to the public since 2004. The library is an
American cultural history collection of 40,000 books, documents, and pieces of
printed ephemera. She consults widely with museums on exhibits relating to
landscape observation and technological history. She has been a project advisor
at the Exploratorium since 2005, and has taught courses through the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art since 2009. Her installation work has shown at
galleries in both New York and San Francisco. She lectures widely on space
history, technological history, and library design and construction, most
recently to classes at the California College of the Arts, at the San Francisco
Art Institute, and on a 2010 national speaking tour. She is the author of Another Science Fiction: Advertising the
Space Race 1957-62 (Blast Books, 2010), and the forthcoming Inside the Machine: Electronics and the
Modern Century (W.W. Norton, 2013). She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from
Reed College.
Guillaume de Syon
Guillaume de Syon teaches history at Albright
College in Reading, PA. Prior to that time, he worked as a contributing editor
on the Einstein Papers Project. He is the author of Zeppelin! Germany and the Airship, 1900-1939
(2002) and of various articles on the cultural history of aerospace, especially
the perception of technology in popular culture. He is
currently completing a history of transatlantic flight.
Trevor Rockwell
Trevor Rockwell currently resides in Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada, where he is finishing his PhD (History) on how official Soviet
and American propaganda magazines explored the theme of space exploration
between 1957 and 1976. He expects to complete this degree in the summer of
2011. Previously, Mr. Rockwell has published articles on how closely Yuri
Gagarin's autobiography complied with Soviet propaganda directives, and on how
science and technology themes proliferated in American propaganda during the
early Cold War.
Day 2:
George C. Herring (Keynote)
George Herring,
Professor Emeritus and formerly Alumni Professor of History, has been connected
to the Patterson School from the early Vince Davis years. He received his B.A.
from Roanoke College in 1957 and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in
1965. Professor Herring retired after thirty-six years at the University of
Kentucky. He served as chair of the Department of History from 1973-1976 and
1988-1996, and he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. In 1993, he was a visiting
professor at the U.S. Military Academy and in 2001 at the University of
Richmond. In 2002, he was awarded the Society for Historians of American
Foreign Relations’ Norman A. Graebner Prize for
distinguished contributions to the field. Professor Herring’s
research centered on U.S. foreign relations. His most recent work is From
Colony to Superpower: American Foreign Relations Since
1776, (part of the Oxford History of the United States). His other
published works include Aid to Russia, 1941-1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the
Origins of the Cold War; with Thomas M. Campbell, eds., The Diaries of
Edward R. Stettinius; America’s Longest War: The United States and
Vietnam, 1950-1975; The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The
"Negotiating Volumes" of the Pentagon Papers; and LBJ and
Vietnam: A Different Kind of War. Professor Herring is one of the nation’s
foremost experts on the Vietnam War.
Matthew H. Hersch
Dr. Matthew H. Hersch is a Postdoctoral Teaching
Fellow with the Aerospace History Project of the Huntington-USC Institute on
California and the West. He received his J.D. from New York University
School of Law and his Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science from the
University of Pennsylvania. During his studies he served as an HSS/NASA
Fellow in the History of Space Science and a Daniel and Florence Guggenheim
Fellow of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. He
is currently completing a labor history of American astronauts.
Amy Kaminski
Amy Paige Kaminski currently
serves as Senior Policy Advisor to the Chief Scientist at NASA Headquarters and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Science and Technology
Studies at Virginia Tech. She previously served as a program examiner at
the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where she was responsible for
providing objective analyses of NASA programs and making recommendations to
White House policy makers regarding budgets and ways to improve the
performance of NASA’s Earth and space sciences and education programs.
Before joining OMB, Ms. Kaminski was an analyst in the Federal
Aviation Administration's Office of the Associate Administrator for Commercial
Space Transportation. Prior to joining FAA, she served as policy and outreach
administrator at the National Space Society. She is a former editor of
the American Astronautical Society's Space Times magazine.
Ms. Kaminski holds a master's degree in Science, Technology, and Public Policy
from The George Washington University. She received her bachelor’s degree from
Cornell University in Earth and Planetary Sciences. She has written
several articles and book chapters on space policy and history topics and is
co-editor of NASA's Exploring
the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,
Volume V: Exploring the Cosmos.
Valerie Neal
Dr. Valerie
Neal is a space history curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum, where she engages in scholarly research, artifact collection, exhibit
development, and public service. Her main area of responsibility is U.S. human
spaceflight since the 1970s. She has
published two books and several articles on space history; been part of the creative
team for two IMAX films; and curated three major
exhibitions on the Space Race, human spaceflight, and the challenges of future
exploration. She also led the effort to restore the space shuttle Enterprise for permanent display and to
acquire SpaceShipOne and flown-in-space IMAX cameras
for the national collection. Her current project is a book on spaceflight in
the shuttle era. Before joining the
Smithsonian, Valerie was very much involved in Shuttle missions in the 1980s.
She served as writer, editor, and manager for 50 NASA publications on shuttle
and Spacelab missions, the space sciences, the Great Observatories and
astrophysics, and NASA history. She also participated in astronaut training
activities and worked in mission support on four shuttle missions. She brings that experience with spaceflight
to her work in the Museum and seeks to link it to her scholarly research. With
graduate degrees in American Studies, Dr. Neal has taught at the University of
Minnesota, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Vanderbilt.
Roger Handberg
Dr. Roger Handberg, chair of the
Political Science Department, specializes in space policy, national security
policy, and judicial politics. He also teaches courses dealing with government
policies in science and technology, economic and business policy, and American
security policy, particularly military space policy and ballistic missile
defense. Handberg has worked at UCF since 1972. He has published nine books and
more than 156 articles and book chapters plus presented over 125 papers. His
recent books include “Chinese Space Policy: A Study in Domestic and
International Politics,” “International Space Commerce: Building from Scratch”
and “Reinventing NASA and the Quest for Outer Space.” Handberg previously
served for two years in the U.S. Army. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science
from the University of North Carolina. He has been interviewed by the Wall
Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, BBC, LA Times, Space News, Time Magazine,
USA Today and local and regional media outlets.
Dean Cheng
Dean Cheng is currently the Research Fellow
for Chinese Political and Military Affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He is
fluent in Chinese, and uses Chinese language materials regularly in his work.
Prior to joining the Heritage Foundation, he was a senior analyst with the
China Studies Division (previously, Project Asia) at CNA from 2001-2009. He
specialized on Chinese military issues, with a focus on Chinese military
doctrine and Chinese space capabilities.Before
joining CNA, he was a senior analyst with Science Applications International
Corporation (SAIC) from 1996-2001. From 1993-1995, he was an analyst with the
US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment in the International Security and
Space Division, where he studied the Chinese defense industrial complex. He has
written a number of papers and book chapters examining various aspects of
Chinese security affairs. Recent publications include: “Chinese Views on
Deterrence,” Joint Force Quarterly (#60, January 2011); “Through a Jingzi, Darkly,” Joint Force Quarterly (#58, July 2010);
and “Prospects for China’s Military Space Efforts,” in Beyond the Strait: PLA Missions Other than Taiwan, ed. by Roy Kamphausen, David Lai, and Andrew Scobell
(Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2009). He has spoken at the
National Space Symposium, the US National Defense University, and MIT, and has
appeared frequently on CNN International, Voice of America, and the New Scientist.
Ashok Maharaj
Ashok Maharaj is a PhD candidate in the School of History, Technology, and Society at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently the Guggenheim Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
Roundtable:
Beth
L. O’Leary
Dr.
O’Leary is an assistant college professor, specializing in cultural resource
management in the Department of Anthropology, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. For the last 11 years she has been involved
with the cultural heritage of outer space and the preservation of historic
sites related to space exploration. Dr. O’Leary has become a recognized expert
in the emerging field of Space Heritage and has been interviewed by the media
in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and China. She has co-chaired
international symposia on Space Heritage at the World Archaeological Congresses
(WAC), (where she is member of the WAC Space Heritage Task Force) and Society
for American Archaeology meetings; and was the keynote speaker at the
International Council on Monuments and Sites in Cairns, Australia. Since 2003
she has served as the Governor appointed vice chair of the Cultural Properties
Review Committee. A recipient of a grant
from the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium (NASA), she investigated both the
archaeological assemblage and the international heritage status of the Apollo
11 Tranquility Base site on the Moon. http://spacegrant.nmsu.edu/lunarlegacies/index.html.
In 2009, she published The Handbook of
Space Engineering, Archaeology and Heritage, by CRC Taylor and Francis
Press with co-editor Ann Darrin (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory). In 2010, working with colleagues and graduate students, the
objects and structures at Tranquility Base were placed on both the California
and New Mexico Registers of Cultural Properties. In January 2011, she was an
invited by NASA to a workshop at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to discuss and
create a white paper for any spacecraft (commercial, NASA, international)
visiting the Apollo landing sites.
Lisa
Westwood
Lisa
Westwood is a Registered Professional Archaeologist with over 16 years of
cultural resource management, contract archaeology, historic preservation,
museum curation, and teaching experience. She holds a
B.A.degree in Anthropology from the University of
Iowa and an M.A. degree in Anthropology (Archaeology) from Eastern New Mexico
University. She is a co-founder of the Apollo 11 Preservation Task Force, a
volunteer group of historic preservation professionals working toward
designation of Tranquility Base on the moon as a World Heritage site. She led
the successful efforts to list the Objects Associated with Tranquility Base on
the California Register of Historical Resources and New Mexico State Register
of Cultural Properties, which were achieved in 2010, and is actively working
with members of Congress to have the site designated a National Historic
Landmark. She is the author of the Tranquility Base National Historic Landmark
Act, currently under consideration by Congress. Ms. Westwood serves as the
Cultural Resources Manager at ECORP Consulting, Inc., an environmental
consulting firm headquartered near Sacramento, California. She also teaches
part time in the anthropology departments at California State University-Chico
and Butte College.
David
H. Onkst
David
Onkst is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at
Erinn
McComb
Erinn
McComb is a Ph.D. candidate at Mississippi State University. She is currently writing her dissertation
entitled, "Why Can’t a Woman Fly:
The Cult of Masculinity and NASA, 1958-1972." Her dissertation advisor is Dr. Alan I
Marcus. At Mississippi State University,
Erinn has specialized in the two history department's nodes of excellence,
International Security and Internal Safety (ISIS), and the History of Science
and Technology (HoST). Last fall Erinn presented her paper
"Consuming Gender in NASA:
Paradoxical Masculine Images of the Astronaut, 1958-1964" at the
Society for the History of Technology conference (SHOT) in Tacoma,
Washington. In 2009 Erinn was the
Outstanding Paper Competition Winner for the MSU Gender Studies Program. In
2008 she was awarded the William E. Parrish Teaching Award. Her academic
interests are the influences of gender upon science, technology, and diplomacy
in the Post Cold War era.
De
Witt Kilgore
De
Witt Douglas Kilgore is an Associate Professor of
English and American Studies at Indiana University. He is the author of Astrofuturism: Science, Race and Visions of Utopia in
Space (2003). Recent
publications include “Difference
Engine: Aliens, Robots, and Other Racial Matters in the History of Science
Fiction” in Science
Fiction Studies and “C/SETI as Fiction:
On James Gunn’s The Listeners,”
in Proceedings of the Societal Impact of
Spaceflight Conference edited by Steven J. Dick and Roger Launius. He currently working
on a book examining the ways in which SETI science has gained cultural
credibility through fiction and non-fiction narrative.
Margaret
L. Dean
Margaret
Lazarus Dean is the author of The Time It
Takes to Fall (Simon & Schuster, 2007), a novel about the Challenger
disaster that won an NEA award and a Hopwood prize for the novel. She holds an
MFA from the University of Michigan and is a professor of English at the
University of Tennessee in Knoxville.