Skip to content

Rachel Mason Dentinger | Assistant Professor

Rachel Mason Dentinger

Rachel Mason Dentinger
Assistant Professor

Rachel.Mason.Dentinger@utah.edu

Curriculum Vitae

801/581-3811

CTIHB 357

About

Dr. Rachel Mason Dentinger is an assistant professor of History at the University of Utah. She is a historian of science, technology, and medicine, with a focus on 19th and 20th-century biology (and especially evolutionary biology), history of medicine, and history of 19th and 20th- century American science and technology. She is completing a book on the history of coevolutionary studies of insects and plants in Cold War America.


Education

  • BS, Ecology, Evolution & Behavior, University of Minnesota

  • PhD, History of Science, Technology & Medicine, University of Minnesota.


Research Focus

History of biology, evolutionary biology, entomology, botany, biomedical research, nonhumans in history


Key Publications

(2018) One Health and its Histories: Animals and the shaping of modern medicine, Abigail Woods, Michael Bresalier, Angela Cassidy, and Rachel Mason Dentinger. Science, Technology and Medicine in Modern History Series, Palgrave.

(2018) “Introduction to ‘Working Across species’”, Rachel Mason Dentinger and Abigail Woods, co-editors of “Working Across Species: Comparative Practices in Modern Medical, Biological and Behavioural Sciences,” a topical collection in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 40 (30).

(2017) “From ‘Actual Forces’ to ‘Token Stimuli’: Gottfried S. Fraenkel and the Evolutionary ‘Raison D’Être’ of Plant Molecules, 1930s-1960s,”Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 47(2): 127-163.

(2017) “Animal Roles and Traces in the History of Medicine, c.1880–1980”, Angela Cassidy, Rachel Mason Dentinger, Kathryn Schoefert, and Abigail Woods, BJHS Themes, “Animal Agents,” edited by Amanda Rees, 2: 11-33.

(2016) "Patterns of Infection and Patterns of Evolution: How a Malaria Parasite Brought ‘Monkeys and Man’ Closer Together in the 1960s,"Journal of the History of Biology 49(2):359-95.

(2016) Ecology and Infection: Studying Host-Parasite Interactions at the Interface of Biology and Medicine,” Pierre-Olivier Méthot  and Rachel Mason Dentinger, co-editors of special issues, “Ecology and Infection,” Journal of the History of Biology, Volume 49 (2): 231-240.


Teaching

HIST 4080 – History of Medicine in Western Civilization
HIST 1110 – European History Since 1300
HIST 3910/HONOR 3955/HPSCI 3950 - History of Women in Science, Technology, and Medicine.
HIST 4701/HONOR 4471 – Darwinian Revolution
HONOR 2109 – Honors Core in Intellectual Traditions, Ecology & Legacy Minor


Awards

2022/2023  Tanner Humanities Center Fellow

2022 Taft-Nicholson Center Faculty Fellow

2021/2022  Environmental Humanities Professorship, Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, University of Utah.

2017   Everett Mendelsohn Prize, Journal of the History of Biology, for ‘‘Patterns of Infection and Patterns of Evolution: How a Malaria Parasite Brought ‘‘Monkeys and Man’’ Closer Together in the 1960s’’ 49 (2016), 359–395.

 

Last Updated: 5/9/24