Carla Bittel
Professor of History | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles , CA, UNITED STATES
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
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Biography
Carla Bittel is Professor of History at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She is a historian of medicine, science, & technology and specializes in nineteenth-century America. Bittel’s research focuses on gender, health and healing practices, the material cultures of science, and the politics of knowledge. Her first book, Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), analyzes contestations over women’s health and medical knowledge through a biographical study of New York physician and activist, Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842-1906). Bittel is co-editor, with Elaine Leong and Christine von Oertzen, of the volume, Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019). She has also published several articles and chapters in edited volumes.
Bittel’s current research focuses on the brain and mind sciences of the nineteenth century and re-examines the history of phrenology by concentrating on its users, who applied, adapted and contested it as a source of knowledge. She is now finishing her book project, A Most Useful and Peculiar Science: Phrenology in Practice in the Nineteenth Century. Bittel’s research has been supported by several grants and fellowships, including an NSF Scholars Award and a Dibner Research Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology from the Huntington Library. She has also been a Visiting Scholar and the co-organizer of a working group (2016-2019) at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
At LMU, she teaches broadly, with courses covering the history of health & disease and the history of science & nature in North America and Europe from the early modern period to the present. She also teaches courses on the U.S. Civil War era. In 2015, her Civil War seminar curated the exhibit, “Not Silent: Finding Voices in Civil War Artifacts,” at the LMU William H. Hannon Library, Archives and Special Collections.
Education (3)
Cornell University : Ph.D., History, 2003
Cornell University: M.A., American History, 1999
University of California, Davis: B.A., History,1995
Areas of Expertise (4)
History of Medicine and Science
Gender Issues
History of Women's Health
Nineteenth-Century U.S. History
Accomplishments (1)
Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize (professional)
Western Association of Women Historians, 2006.
Affiliations (3)
- Working Group Co-Organizer, “Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge,” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (2016-1019)
- American Association for the History of Medicine
- History of Science Society
Links (4)
Research Grants (11)
Dibner Research Fellowship in the History of Science and Technology
The Huntington Library
2020-2021
Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation Fellow
Countway Library of Medicine
2018-2019
Visiting Scholar
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin
September-December 2016, and June 2-June 16, 2017
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 (7)
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 (8)
Cranial Compatibility: Phrenology, Measurement, and Marriage Assessment
Part of the Isis Focus section, “It’s a Match!”“Cranial Compatibility: Phrenology, Measurement, and Marriage Assessment” Isis 112, no. 4 (December 2021): 795-803.
Introduction: Paper, Gender, and the History of Knowledge
Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of KnowledgeCarla Bittel, Elaine Leong, and Christine von Oertzen
“Introduction: Paper, Gender and the History of Knowledge,” in Working with Paper: Gendered Practices in the History of Knowledge, eds. Carla Bittel, Elaine Leong, and Christine von Oertzen, 1-14. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
