Sharrona Pearl, PhD, is a historian and theorist of the face and body. She received a PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University, and has published widely in Victorian medicine and science, media and religion, critical race, gender, and disability studies, bioethics and medical humanities, prison studies and face recognition and AI. Her current project explores the face recognition spectrum from face blindness to super recognition. Pearl maintains an active public writing profile, and has published articles in a number of places, including The Washington Post, Real Life Magazine, Lilith, Tablet, JTA, Chronicle Vitae, and Kveller. You can find clips of her writing on her website at www.sharronapearl.com.
Academic Distinctions
Visiting Scholar, MCPHS Center for Health Humanities; Top Poster Award, ICA 2016, Royal Historical Society Fellow
Professional Society
Society for the History of Technology
Feminist Association for Bioethics
American Association for the History of Medicine
International Communication Association
Selected Publications
Pearl, S. (2017) Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other. University of Chicago Press.
Pearl, S. (2010). About Faces: Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Harvard University Press.
Pearl, S. (2020). Staying Angry: Black women’s resistance to racialized forgiveness in US police shootings. Women’s Studies in Communication. DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2020.1744208
Pearl, S. (2020) “#sorrynotsorry: a teaching module on advertising gaffes in the digital age,” ASQ, 21:2.
Pearl, S. (2020). Deglamming as Estrangement: Ugly in Monster, The Hours, and Cake. Cinema Journal 8:1,
218-248. http://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cinej/article/view/268/545
Editorial review board membership:
Advertising and Society Quarterly
Research Interests
Bioethics and Medical Humanities, History of Science, Medicine and Technology, Critical Race, Gender, and Disability Studies, Media and Communication Studies
Specialization
Science studies, history of science and medicine, critical race, gender, and disability studies, media studies
Graduate: Harvard University • November 2005
PhD History of Science
University Of Cambridge • 2002 – 2003
Visiting Student, History and Philosophy of Science (Supervisors: Simon Schaffer
and Jim Secord)
Undergraduate: York University • June 1999
BA (hons.) Summa Cum Laude in Humanities and Science Studies
Hebrew University Of Jerusalem • 1997 – 1998
Junior Year Abroad Programme