Biography

Andrew Jewett works at the intersection of intellectual and political history, with particular interests in the politics of knowledge and engagements between religion and science (including the social sciences). His writings examine how political ideologies have intersected with knowledge claims and ethical commitments across the West, especially in the modern United States. His book Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War explores the cultural and political hopes that many American scholars invested in science from the 1860s to the 1950s. His current project, Dehumanizing Science in Postwar America, traces fears about science’s cultural impact among intellectual and political leaders and ordinary citizens since the mid-twentieth century. At Harvard, he has given courses on American and European thought, culture, and politics; taught the Social Studies 10 core; and supervised graduate research and exam preparation for students in History, American Studies, History of Science, the Study of Religion, and the Graduate School of Education. Jewett has also taught at Yale, Vanderbilt, and NYU and won fellowships from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Education, Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, Tulane’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study, and the National Humanities Center.