United States

Jessica Wang’s main interests lie in U.S. political and intellectual history, political theory, the history of science and technology, and the history of U.S. foreign relations. Her book, American Science in an Age of Anxiety (1999), provided a major study of the effects of cold war anti communism on the American scientific community, and her more recent publications include an essay on the relationship between the United States and the United Nations and the dynamics of unilateralism and internationalism in U.S. foreign policy, and an article on American legal thought and conceptions of the administrative state in the 1930s. Wang’s current research project, tentatively titled "'Dreamers with Shovels': Technocratic Thought and the New Deal Political Imagination," examines the interplay between science, technology, and New Deal public policy. Although her research focuses upon the intersections between science, technology, and politics, her teaching interests range further afield to encompass a broad spectrum of topics in United States history, and she especially enjoys teaching an undergraduate seminar on the Vietnam War. Her graduate seminars in recent years have included “Political and Social Theory: Hobbes to Habermas” (Fall 2000), “International Order and U.S. Foreign Relations since 1945" (Spring 2002, co-taught with Geoffrey Robinson), “‘Golden Oldies’: Classics in U.S. History and Historiography” (Spring 2005), “Law, Political Economy, and the American State, 1850-1940" (Fall 2005), and History 246C, the introductory graduate survey in 20th century U.S. history (Spring 2000, Spring 2001, Spring 2004).

Wang will join the history faculty of the University of British Columbia in July 2006, where she will be Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in U.S. History.

"”Dreamers with Shovels': Technocratic Thought and the New Deal Political Imagination.” Projected book-length study of the New Dealer's use of science as a model for politics and the role of technocratic ideals in American political thought. Long-term project.

“Imagining the Administrative State: Legal Pragmatism, Securities Regulation, and New Deal Liberalism,” Journal of Policy History 17:3 (2005): 257-93.

“Purges in Comparative Perspective: Rules for Exclusion and Inclusion in the Scientific Community under Political Pressure,” co-authored with Richard Beyler and Alexei Kojevnikov, in Osiris, vol. 20, Politics and Science in Wartime: Comparative International Perspectives on the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (2005), ed. Carola Sachse and Mark Walker, pp. 23-48. Also to be published in a German language volume.

“The United States, the United Nations, and the Other Post-Cold War World Order: Internationalism and Unilateralism in the American Century,” in Cold War Triumphalism: The Politics of American History After the Fall of Communism, ed. Ellen W. Schrecker (New York: New Press, 2004).

"Scientists and the Problem of the Public in Cold War America, 1945-1960," Osiris, vol.17 "Science and Civil Society," ed. Thomas H. Broman and Lynn K. Nyhart, 2002.

"Merton's shadow: Perspectives on science and democracy since 1940," Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences 30:2 (Fall 1999, 279-306..

American Science in an Age of Anxiety: Scientists, Anticommunism, and the Cold War (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

"Liberals, the progressive left, and the political economy of postwar American science: The National Science Foundation debate revisited," Historical studies in the physical and biological sciences 26 (Fall 1995): 139-66.

"Science, Security, and the Cold War: The Case of E. U. Condon," Isis 83 (June 1992): 238-69.