Erik Rau

Position:	Assistant Teaching Professor of History
Field:	History of Technology
Office:	3021 MacAlister
Phone:	(215) 895-0992
Email:	erau@drexel.edu
Office Hours:	click here for current office hours

Personal Statement

My fascination with technology and its uses has coalesced around issues of policy and power. I teach and write about ways in which technology is used to assist, resist, or mediate the exercise of power. Violence and the military, gender relations, globalization's impact on poorer nations, environmental policy and remediation, and information science and technology have all been the focus of courses and publications.

Operations research, the focus of my current research, has permeated planning and policy making in a wide variety of technological activities since its debut in World War II. Often promoted as a way of rendering decision making more scientific, OR has frequently served the cause of corporate and state power but has not conferred invulnerability nor quelled controversy. The history of OR provides a perspective on technology's power and its limits since the mid-twentieth century.

I have been awarded fellowships by the American Historical Association, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. I am a member of the Society for the History of Technology, which I have served in a several official capacities. I also have memberships in the American Historical Association and the History of Science Society. I referee manuscripts and review books for a variety of scholarly journals.

Education

B.S. with Honors, Values, Technology, Science, and Society, Stanford University, 1989.
Ph.D., History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, 1999.

Recent Publications

Combat Science: The Adoption of Operations Research in the United States, 1942-1952 , MIT Press, forthcoming.
"Learning to See: Radar, Air Defense, and the Adoption of Operations Research in the U.S. Army, 1942-43," for consideration by Technology and Culture, forthcoming.
"Managing Information: The Brief Postwar Romance of Operations Research and Library Science." Chemical Heritage Newsmagazine 22 (Summer 2004).
"Technological Systems, Expertise, and Policy Making: The British Origins of Operational Research." In Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes . Eds. Michael Thad Allen and Gabrielle Hecht. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
"The Adoption of Operations Research in the United States during World War II." In Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After . Eds. Agatha C. Hughes and Thomas P. Hughes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.

Courses Usually Taught

HIST 162 - Themes in World Civilization II
HIST 163 - Themes in World Civilization III
HIST 201 - US History, to 1815
HIST 202 - US History, 1815 - 1900
HIST 203 - US History, since 1900
HIST 285 - Technology in Historical Perspective
HIST 585 - Technology in Historical Perspective
HIST 586 - Explorations in Technology and Gender
PSCI 541 - Technology in Developing Nations