Pamela M. Henson
Historian

Smithsonian Institution Archives
PO Box 37012
Capital Gallery 3100 MRC 507
Washington, DC 20013-7012
hensonp@si.edu

Education

B.A. (1971); M.A. (1975) George Washington University; Ph.D. (1990) University of Maryland

Research Interests

History of natural history, especially entomology; history of women in science; history of scientific illustration; history of the Smithsonian Institution; history of museums; use of visual evidence, both photographs and moving images, to study science; use of oral history as a methodological tool.

Current Research Projects

Working on a book, with colleague, on images of American science, using visual evidence to analyze scientific practice.

Current or Projected Exhibits

"Celebrating 100 Years: The National Museum of Natural History," National Museum of Natural History, May 2010 to March 2011.

"Darwin's Legacy," Smithsonian Institution Libraries Exhibit in National Museum of Natural History, September 2009-August 2010

"Ways of Seeing: Photography and Science," National Museum of Natural History, July 2011-March 2012 See web exhibits at http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits.html.

Current Publications

"From Analog to Digital: The Smithsonian Institution Archives Digital Preservation Initiative," Oral History Association Newsletter, XLIII, No. 3 (Winter 2009), pp. 1, 4, 6.

"Nineteenth Century Smithsonian Anthropologists: Creating a Discipline and a Profession," AnthroNotes, 29, 1 (2008), pp. 12-18.

"Le mouvement d'étude de nature (Nature Study) aux Etats-Unis. Citoyens et Science vers la fin du 19ème siècle. Le rôle d'Anna Botsford Comstock," in F. Charvolin, A. Micoud and L. Nyhart, eds., Des Sciences Citoyennes? La Question de L'amateur dans les Sciences Naturalistes. Ed. de l'Aube, La Tour d'Aigues, 2007, pp. 19-39.

"Reading Photographs: Photographs as Evidence in Writing the History of Modern Science," With R.E. Doel, in R. E. Doel and T. Söderqvist, eds., Writing Recent Science: New Directions in the History of Science. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 201-235.

"A National Science and A National Museum," Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences," 55, Suppl. I, No. 3 (2004): 32-55.

'What Holds the Earth Together': Agnes Chase and American Agrostology," Journal of the History of Biology 36 (2003): 437-460

"Invading Arcadia: Women Scientists in the Field in Latin America, 1900-1950," The Americas 58, 4 (April 2002): 577-600.

"Spencer Baird's Dream: A U.S. National Museum," essay in Cultures and Institutions of Natural History, edited by Alan Leviton, California Academy of Sciences, 2000, pp. 101-126.

"The Smithsonian Goes to War: The Increase and Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge in the Pacific," essay in Science and the Pacific War: Science and Survival in the Pacific, 1939-1945, edited by Roy M. MacLeod, Kluwer Academic Press, 2000.

"'Objects of Curious Research': The History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian," Isis, 90 (1999): S249-S269.

'Through Books to Nature': Anna Botsford Comstock and the Nature Study Movement," in Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, B. T. Gates and A. B. Shteir, eds., Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1998, pp. 116-43.