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Carla Bittel

Professor of History

Los Angeles , CA, UNITED STATES

Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts

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Biography

Carla Bittel is Associate Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University. She is a historian of nineteenth-century America, specializing in the history of medicine, science, and technology. Her research focuses on gender issues and she has written on the history of women’s health, women physicians, and the role of science in medicine. Bittel is the author of Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America, published with the University of North Carolina Press in 2009. She has published in the journals Centaurus and Bulletin of the History of Medicine, and contributed to the edited volume, Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine. Her research has been supported by several grants, including a Scholar’s Award from the National Science Foundation. Her current work examines the politics of gender and phrenology in antebellum America. She is also a co-organizer of the Working Group, “Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge,” at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.

Education

Cornell University

Ph.D., History, 2003

Cornell University

M.A., American History, 1999

University of California, Davis

B.A., 1995

Areas of Expertise

History of Medicine and ScienceGender IssuesHistory of Women's Health Nineteenth-Century U.S. History

Accomplishments

Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize | professional

Western Association of Women Historians, 2006.

Affiliations

  • Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Visiting Scholar, September-December 2016, and June 2-June 16, 2017

Research Grants

Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellow

Countway Library of Medicine

2018-2019

Summer Stipends

National Endowment for the Humanities

Summer 2014

Anna K. and Mary E. Cunningham Research Residency

New York State Library

2013

Bellarmine Research Award

Loyola Marymount University

2012-2013

Summer Research Grant

Loyola Marymount University

Summer 2010

Scholars Award

National Science Foundation

September 2007-August 2008

Research Fellowship

Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History

2007

The Bellarmine College Fellowship

Loyola Marymount University

Spring 2007

Mayers Fellowship and Helen Bing Fellowship

The Huntington Library

January-May 2006

Courses

Science, Nature & Society

Science, Nature & Society

The United States & the World

The United States & the World

Health and Disease in American Culture

Health and Disease in American Culture

Gender, Technology, and the Body

Gender, Technology, and the Body

History of Childhood and the Family

History of Childhood and the Family

The Civil War

The Civil War

Imagining Lincoln

Imagining Lincoln

Articles

Unpacking the Phrenological Toolkit: Gender and Identity in Antebellum America

Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge

“Unpacking the Phrenological Toolkit: Gender and Identity in Antebellum America” in Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge, eds. Carla Bittel, Elaine Leong, and Christine von Oertzen (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 91-107.

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Testing the Truth of Phrenology: Knowledge Experiments in Antebellum American Cultures of Science and Health

Medical History

“Testing the Truth of Phrenology: Knowledge Experiments in Antebellum American Cultures of Science and Health” Medical History 63, no. 3 (2019): 352-374.

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Woman, Know Thyself: Producing and Using Phrenological Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America

Beyond the Academy: Histories of Gender and Knowledge

“Woman, Know Thyself: Producing and Using Phrenological Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Beyond the Academy: Histories of Gender and Knowledge, Christine von Oertzen, Maria Rentetzi, and Elizabeth Siegel Watkins, eds. Centaurus 55 (May 2013): 104-130.

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A Literary Physician? The Paris Writings of Mary Putnam Jacobi

Communicating Disease: Cultural Representations of American Medicine

“A Literary Physician? The Paris Writings of Mary Putnam Jacobi” in Communicating Disease: Cultural Representations of American Medicine Carmen Birkle and Johanna Heil, eds. (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2013).

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Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Nineteenth-Century Politics of Women’s Health Research

Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine

“Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Nineteenth-Century Politics of Women’s Health Research” in Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine Ellen More, Elizabeth Fee, and Manon Parry, eds. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, December 2008), 23-51.

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Science, Suffrage, and Experimentation: Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Controversy Over Vivisection in Late Nineteenth-Century America

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

“Science, Suffrage, and Experimentation: Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Controversy Over Vivisection in Late Nineteenth-Century America” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79 (Winter 2005): 664-694.

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