Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Associate Professor, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Director of Graduate Studies, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Associate Professor, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Director of Graduate Studies, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Specialties
I am a historian of modern industrial culture, with a focus on mechanical technologies. I think mechanisms matter, and so do materials – and the ways people combine mechanisms and materials to build the world around them. I am also a historian of technological orthodoxies, and analyze how technological ideals solidify into cultural expectations.
Efficiency as a technological orthodoxy was the subject of my first book. Mantra of Efficiency (Hopkins 2008) examined how efficiency emerged as a central value in late industrial society, (Mantra was awarded the Edelstein Prize of the Society for the History of Technology). Efficiency was an obscure medieval idea about the power of God as prime mover of the universe. Efficiency became a technological value during industrialization, developed in analyses of the prime movers of industry: waterwheels and steam engines. It was next imported into economics and business thinking, and then morphed again, to become a central value tied to productivity and good management. In studying efficiency, I wrote that I was up against
“a technological orthodoxy: the belief that all things should act efficiently. Like all orthodoxies it offers comfort and guidance, but, as orthodoxies do, it also has the power to wound those who cannot follow its dogmas or who resist its rituals of conformity. It is technological because it has primarily to do with making things work, and it is particularly apparent in the contemporary emphasis on quantifiable productivity and associated fears of waste, especially the waste of time. Historical study offers a tool for uncovering and critically examining the technological orthodoxies that increasingly dominate life in industrial and post-industrial societies” (Mantra, xi-xii).
Mantra concludes that efficiency had power to wound because it was a tool of control as much as a measurement of productivity. This is born out in analyses of the role of efficiency in thwarting resistance by industrial laborers in Weimar Germany and of the work of economics Nobel laureate Robert William Fogel, who, late in his career, came to attribute the surprising efficiency of American antebellum slavery to coercive gang labor.
I am currently at work on two projects: I am completing my own book manuscript on technology and religion with the working title Different Worlds, Different Gods, and I am one of four co-general editors of the six-volume Bloomsbury Cultural History of Technology, of which I am also the originating editor.
Technology and religion is emerging as an important field. Suzanne Moon identified this new field in Technology’s Storytellers and it is the subject of a fall 2020 special issue of History and Technology, of which I was guest co-editor and for which I wrote the introduction. Two Worlds, Two Gods: How Technology Divided Mainline and Evangelical Christians, uses technology as a lens to document the postwar development of a major religious divide that was also a cultural divide, between liberal/mainline protestant Christians and conservative evangelical Christians. Attention to technology turns up a surprising and significant element of this story: after World War II mainline liberal protestants feared what technology could do to human society and subjected it to sustained theological and social critique, whereas evangelical Christians eagerly embraced emerging technologies that promised them more power in their evangelizing missions: to carry the Christian gospel of salvation to every corner of the globe.
These opposing views of technology played out in different practical programs, including, on the liberal/mainline side, the Detroit Industrial Mission’s brokering of the peace following the uprising in Detroit in summer 1967; the World Council of Churches’ funding of freedom fighters in Namibia as a way to support native mine workers; and the California Council of Churches responding to industrial agriculture by staffing and funding Cesar Chavez as he founded the United Farm Workers. On the evangelical side, views of technology played out in new bush-flying methods to lower gifts to tribes in Ecuador before missionaries arrived in person; the development of communications and organizational technologies to manage crowds of millions at rallies such as Billy Graham’s in Seoul in 1973; management techniques that supported extensive international programs of charitable relief; and the launching of radio engineering education and hundreds of radio programs in dozens of languages on six of the seven continents. This is a complex story of great significance in the present moment. The study opens a window on our own increasingly polarized society by revealing how far apart were these two views of technology, and, thus, of current technological society.
The Bloomsbury Cultural History of Technology, of which I am co-general editor alongside Amy Bix, Suzanne Moon, and Bill Storey, is a long-term project in the final stages of editing. The project examines technologies from the ancient world to the present, and involves more than sixty chapter authors and volume editors from around the world. The variety of subjects and methods represented in these volumes is truly eye opening, and the series will provide a strong, deep base from which to reconsider what we mean by cultural history of technology.
Jennifer Alexander is a historian of modern technology, with specialization in mechanical technologies; technology and religion; industrial culture; and engineering, ethics, and society. Her early articles and first book, The Mantra of Efficiency, focused on foundational concepts of industry and industrial culture; the translation of technological values into social values; the mathematics and mechanics of machine performance; and the developing cultural power of a particular technological value: efficiency. Mantra of Efficiency was awarded the Edelstein Prize by the Society for the History of Technology, as outstanding book published in the preceding three years. Alexander's current research focuses on technology and religion. Her current book manuscript has the working title Two Gods, Two Worlds, and analyzes the international religious critique of technology that developed following WWII. Methodologically, she examines religious and theological influences on technology; how technologies and engineering have extended their reach into the human world through developing technological orthodoxies; and how these changes affected each other. She teaches courses in history of technology, engineering ethics, theories of technological change, and religion and technology.
Ph.D. 1996, Department of History, University of Washington
M.A. 1990, Department of History, University of Wyoming
B.S. 1987, Department of History, University of Wyoming
Director of Graduate Studies, Program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Minnesota, 2017-present
Associate Professor, University of Minnesota, Mechanical Engineering, 2007 - present
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota, Mechanical Engineering, 1999-2007
2010 Sidney M. Edelstein Prize, Society for the History of Technology, for Mantra of Efficiency as best book published in three years.
History and Technology, special issue Technology and Religion (September 2020), co-editor.
“A Brief History of Engineering”, in Diane P. Michelfelder and Neelke Doorn, eds., The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering (New York and London: Routledge, 2021), 25-37.
“An engineering career as industrial mission: Jack Keiser in post-war Britain,” History and Technology 36 (2020): 263-291.
“Introduction: The entanglement of technology and religion,” History and Technology 36 (2020): 165-186.