Bio:
Amy E. Slaton is a professor emerita in the Department of History. She holds a PhD in the History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught courses in the history of American science, technology and architecture, as well as in U.S. labor history, race relations, and histories of disability. Prof. Slaton directed Drexel's Master's Program in Science, Technology and Society from 2001 to 2009 and has been a visiting associate professor at Haverford College.
Prof. Slaton’s research has centered on the social character of technoscientific expertise and work. She has written on the history of building technologies and materials testing, with a focus on who gets credit when things go well, and who gets blamed when structures and materials fail. Her book, "Reinforced Concrete and the Modernization of American Building, 1900-1930" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), integrated the histories of materials testing, construction labor, building codes and standards, and aesthetic change surrounding the introduction of commercial reinforced concrete in the United States. Further work on materiality, labor and historical formulations of human difference can be found in her edited volume, New Materials: Towards a History of Consistency (Lever Press, 2020).
Slaton is also interested in recent understandings of technical aptitude in engineering education under capitalism more generally, with particular emphasis on the role of race, gender, disability and queer identifications. She is the author of Race, Rigor, and Selectivity in U.S. Engineering: The History of an Occupational Color Line (Harvard University Press, 2010). Her current book project is "All Good People: Diversity, Difference and The Invention of Opportunity," under contract with MIT Press.
Slaton produces the website, amyeslaton.com centered on equity in technical education and workforce issues, and her commentaries have appeared in Inside Higher Ed, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other outlets. She is co-editor, with Tiago Saraiva, of the journal, History+Technology.