Name Ruth Cowan | ||
Education Johns Hopkins University (1964–1969) Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Humanities, US & Canada Books More Work for Mother: The Ironi, A social history of American, Heredity and Hope, Sir Francis Galton and the Study | ||
SHOT 2016: Keynote Address by Ruth Cowan
Ruth Schwartz Cowan (born 1941) is an American historian of technology noted for research on how household technologies such as home appliances affected expectations of women and housework.
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Biography
Ruth Schwartz Cowan was trained as a historian of science. Cowan has a B.A. from Barnard College, an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, under supervision of William Coleman.
Cowan was a professor of history at SUNY Stony Brook from 1967 to 2002. She also served as Director of Women's Studies from 1985-1990 and Chair of the Honors College from 1997-2002. Cowan is a Professor Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania.
Cowan's book More Work for Mother found that since 1700, "technological change shifted the burden of domestic labor from adult men and children to mothers and wives."
Honors and awards
Cowan's More Work for Mother received the Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology in 1984. In 1997 the Society for the History of Technology also awarded him the Leonardo da Vinci Medal.
Cowan received the John Desmond Bernal Prize in 2007 for distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) for her textbook A Social History of American Technology.