Scott G. Knowles, Ph.D.

Director of Great Works Symposium; Associate Professor

Office: 3025 MacAlister
Phone: (215) 895-6762
Email: sgk23@drexel.edu

Curriculum Vitae: Download

Education

• B.A., History and Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin. 1995
• M.A., History, The University of Texas at Austin. 1996
• Ph.D., History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Johns Hopkins University. 2003

Biography

Thanks for your interest in the Department of History and Politics at Drexel University. I am a historian of modern cities, technology, and public policy–with a particular focus on risk and disaster. My most recent book is: The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

I am also the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Inquiry in the Pennoni Honors College--where I oversee the Great Works Symposium and the Custom-Designed Major.

I completed my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology in 2003, after completing an M.A. in history and B.A. in history and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.

I am also the author/editor of: Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (UPenn Press, 2009); and have published articles, essays, and book reviews in The Next American City, Isis, History and Technology, the New York Times, Public Works Management and Policy, Technology and Culture, Business History Review, Enterprise and Society, The Smart Set, and Annals of Science.

Publications

• The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
• Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (Editor, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
• "Defending Philadelphia: A Historical Case Study of Civil Defense in the Early Cold War" Public Works Management & Policy, (Vol. 11, No. 3, 2007): 217-232.
• “Lessons in the Rubble: The World Trade Center and the History of Disaster Investigations in the United States,” History and Technology (Spring, 2003): 9-28.
• “Knowledge for Use: Science, Higher Education, and America’s New Industrial Heartland, 1880-1915,” Annals of Science (January, 2002): 1-20 (with Robert H. Kargon).
• “Industrial Versailles: Eero Saarinen’s Corporate Campuses for GM, IBM, and AT&T,” Isis (March, 2001): 1-33 (with Stuart W. Leslie).