The list of selected staff publications may be searched by keyword or author and can be sorted by year.
An examination of the visual and material manifestations.
Publications
"Poor Lo and Dusky Ramona: Scenes From a Nineteenth Century Album on Indian America,"
in Jane Becker, ed. Folk Roots, New Roots: The Formation of American Folk Culture. Boston, MA: Museum of Our National Heritage: Lexington, MA, 1989.
“Wayward Wife as Muse: Anais Nin and Ian Hugo,”
in Anais Nin: A Book of Mirrors, ed. by Paul Herron. Huntington Woods, Mich.: Sky Blue Press, 1996, pp. 44–57.
A critical appraisal of the influence of diarist and surrealist Anais Nin on the films of her husband Ian Hugo. Nin served as muse, model, actress, and collaborator in inspiring Hugo to become a creative artist.
“Souvenirs of Roads Not Taken: Virtual Travel with the Underwood & Underwood Travel System and the World Wide Web,”
in Culture as the Tourist Product, ed. by Mike Robinson, Nigel Evans, and Paul Callaghan. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, 1996, pp. 131–139.
The text of a paper delivered at a conference on tourism details the ways in which commercially published stereographs were used to simulate travel experiences, 1895-1921.
“Labyrinthine Walk: A Guide for Politically Incorrect Tourists,”
in Culture as the Tourist Product, ed. by Mike Robinson, Nigel Evans, and Paul Callaghan. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, 1996, pp. 141–157.
The text of a paper delivered at a conference on tourism analyzes the goals of tourists when visiting museums as part of a sight-seeing ritual.
“Betty Hahn: The Early Years,”
essay in Betty Hahn: Photography or Maybe Not, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.
This essay describes the influence of Hahn's graduate school photography professor, Henry Holmes Smith, on her early work, including her revival of "obsolete" photographic processes such as gum-bichromate. Her technical and aesthetic experiments are described.
“Barbara Beirne’s Women of Southern Appalachia,”
Now and Then (The Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, East Tennessee State University), Summer 1997, pp. 3–7.
A description of Barbara Beirne's aims in interviewing and photographing a number of energetic, courageous Appalachian women and how these documents highlight important aspects of Appalachian cultural, social, and economic history.
“Automatic Photobooths in Context(s),”
foreword in Nakki Goranin, American Photobooth. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Feb. 2008, pp. 9-13.
A psychological and cultural meditation about the unique experience of photobooth photographs, with notes about the NMAH Hall of Photography’s photobooth.
"The Scurlock Studio: A Biography,"
(with Donna M. Wells), Picturing the Promise: The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington. Washington, D.C.: National Museum of African American History and Culture in collaboration with the National Museum of American history, 2009, pp. 196-212.
A history of the Scurlock family studio and its significance for the African American community of Washington.
“American Photographs in Europe and Illusions of Travel,”
American Photographs in Europe, ed. by David Nye and Mick Gidley. Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1994, pp. 57–75.
A discussion of the interrelationship of stereograph publisher Underwood & Underwood's European sales activities and its stereoscopic documentation of Europe for both the American and European markets.
“The Archives Center and Photography: National Museum of American History,”
History of Photography, Spring 2000 (Vol. 24, No. 1), p. 49.
A description of the Archives Center's photographic collections, policies, and programs, with emphasis on major recent acquisitions, such as the Scurlock Studio Records.
“The Scurlock Ninety-Year Project: Black Washington in Black America,”
Exposure, vol. 32:1 (1999), pp. 64–73.
A summary of the history of the Scurlock Studio and a description of the the Museum's Scurlock collection, with remarks about conservation challenges, especially regarding deteriorating acetate negatives.
"Objects in an Exhibition: Reflections on 'Fast Attacks and Boomers."
In Materializing the Military. Artefacts VI: Military Technology, ed. Bernard Finn and Barton C. Hacker. London: Science Museum Press, in press
On several key objects in an exhibition on submarines in the Cold War and how they contributed to the exhibition theme
"Uniforms Make the Woman."
with Margaret Vining. In Materializing the Military. Artefacts VI: Military Technology, ed. Bernard Finn and Barton C. Hacker. London: Science Museum Press, in press
In the 1920s, a Smithsonian exhibition of women's uniforms validated women's World War I contributions and expanded political roles.
"Science and Technology in the Nineteenth Century."
In A Guide to the Sources of United States Military History: Supplement IV, ed.Robin Higham and Donald J. Mrozek, 82–117. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1998.
Bibliographical essay focused on recent scholarship on the interaction of science and technology with American military institutions in the 19th century.
"Military Institutions and the Labor Process: Noneconomic Sources of Technological Change, Women's Subordination, and the Organization of Work."
with Sally L. Hacker. Technology and Culture 28 (1987): 743–75.
Society and economy are as much products as causes of military and technological change.
"Industrial Armies: From Industrial Revolution to World War."
Acta of the International Congress of Military History, Rabat (Morocco), August 2004, in press
On the interaction of industrial and military institutions from the 18th century to World War I
"Fortunes of War: From Primitive Warfare to Nuclear Weapons in Anthropological Thought.”
In The Cultural Shaping of Violence, ed. Myrdene Anderson. West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, in press.
How anthropology and archaeology have dealt with war since the 19th century.
“Military Patronage and the Geophysical Sciences in the United States: An Introduction.”
Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30:2 (2000): 1–5.
Military funding has shaped the development of American meteorology, oceanography, geology, geodesy, and other earth sciences.
World Military History Bibliography: Premodern and Nonwestern Military Institutions and Warfare.
History of Warfare, vol. 16. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Annotated bibliography of works published 1967–97.
“Gunpowder and the Changing Military Order: The Islamic Gunpowder Empires, ca. 1450–ca. 1650.”
In The Heirs of Archimedes: Technology, Science and Warfare, 1350–1800, ed. Brett D. Steele and Tamera L. Dorland. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, in press.
The adoption of gunpowder weapons tended to strengthen central governments against regional powers.
“Comment on Josef Lange.”
In Research Budgets in an Age of Limits: American-European Comparative Perspectives, ed. Klaus-Dirk Henke et al., 122–24. Europäische Schriften zu Staat und Wirtschaft 2. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000.
On military funding for scientific research.
“Out of the Shadows: Images of Women’s Military Work, 1500–1920,”
with Margaret Vining. In War, Media and Military from Guteburg to Today, ed. M. E. Ionescu, 164-75. Bucharest: Military Publishing House, 2004.
Graphic images of women in military settings document women's changing military roles from the 16th century through World War I.
“Military Science.”
In Cambridge History of Modern Science, vol. 8, Science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. David Livingstone and Ronald L. Numbers et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press.
Links between military and scientific institutions expanded and intensified during the 19th and 20th centuries.
“Nuclear Weapons.”
In The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed. Paul S. Boyer et al., 562–63. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Overview of U.S. nuclear weapons development from World War II to the present.
West Point in the Making of America.
with Margaret Vining. Irvington, N.Y.: Hydra, 2002.
Catalog of the West Point in the Making of America exhibition.