Director

Scott Gabriel Knowles has served as the director of the Great Works Symposium since 2007—he served as assistant director from 2005-2007. As an instructor in the Great Works Symposium he has taught: The Atomic Bomb, The Automobile, Media Interactivity, Physical Philadelphia, and The Next Philadelphia. He is also an assistant professor of history in the Department of History and Politics and serves as co-director of the Drexel Engineering Cities Initiative.

Knowles completed his 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.

Knowles’s research interests are centered on cities, technology, and historical change. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing and writing about cities, including historical, urban planning, sociological, and psychogeographical methods.

He is the author/editor of two forthcoming books: Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (UPenn Press, 2009) and Disaster City: Risk Experts in the American Metropolis (UPenn Press, 2010). He has also published articles 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, and Annals of Science.