Kara W Swanson
Biographic Data
| ID | 388051 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kara W Swanson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kara W |
| FAMILY NAME | Swanson |
| SIGNATURE | SWANSON K W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Northeastern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8953-3131 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 8 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Inventing the Woman Voter
In 1870, the New York State Suffrage Association published a pamphlet titled “Woman as Inventor.” White suffragists distributed this history of female invention to prove women's inventiveness, countering arguments that biological disabilities justified women's legal disabilities. In the United States, inventiveness was linked to the capacity for original thought considered crucial for voters, making female inventiveness relevant to the franchise.…
Life on Ice
Reviewed by: Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood by Joanna Radin Kara W. Swanson Joanna Radin. Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. xii + 305 pp. Ill. $40.00 (978-0-226-41731-8). Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood is a self-proclaimed story of “salvage and salvation” (p. xii). Author Joanna Radin borrows “salvage” from one of her subjects, Jacob Gruber, an anth…
Great Men,” Law, and the Social Construction of Technology
Is Alexander Graham Bell's fame owed to law and lawyers? Two recent histories argue that some popular tales of invention originated with lawyers and judges as part of patent litigation battles (Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday , Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain [2013]; Christopher Beauchamp , Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America [2015]). Bringing …
Rubbing Elbows and Blowing Smoke
The United States Patent Office of the 1850s offers a rare opportunity to analyze the early gendering of science. In its crowded rooms, would-be scientists shared a workplace with women earning equal pay for equal work. Scientific men worked as patent examiners, claiming this new occupation as scientific in opposition to those seeking to separate science and technology. At the same time, in an unprecedented and ultimately unsuccessful experiment,…
Body Banks
My dissertation traces the invention and development of a new form of banking, body banking. Today, the body bank as an institution that collects, stores, processes, and distributes a human body product is a taken-for-granted aspect of medicine in the United States. We donate to blood banks, we cherish sperm bank babies, and we contemplate many sorts of banks, including cord blood banks, gene banks, and egg banks. Such institutions have existed f…
Human Milk as Technology and Technologies of Human Milk
In 1922, two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) undergraduates in mechanical engineering proudly presented their senior thesis, "The Design of a Machine to Powder Milk" (Young and Sutherland 1922).While machines already existed to powder bovine milk (Baumgartner 1920), their machine was novel because it was designed to dry human milk.The aspiring engineers had been recruited by Dr. Lawrence Smith of the Boston Floating Hospital to solve …
The Emergence of the Professional Patent Practitioner
From the early republic to the present, the social networks created by successful American inventors to support their technologies have included individuals who have helped inventors mobilize the legal system. The role of the patent practitioner in this joint history of law and technology has remained largely hidden behind the myth of the lone inventor and the drama of courtroom patent battles. This paper traces patent solicitation as a professio…
Biotech in Court
This paper examines the American legal system's reliance upon the unity of science through a close study of the testimony presented in a biotech patent trial, explicated through the context of the legal practice of patent drafting and the history of the American biotechnology industry. In order to decide whether a key patent related to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invalid, the court needed to decide whether the inventing scientists had…
Human Milk as Technology and Technologies of Human Milk
In 1922, two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) undergraduates in mechanical engineering proudly presented their senior thesis, "The Design of a Machine to Powder Milk" (Young and Sutherland 1922).While machines already existed to powder bovine milk (Baumgartner 1920), their machine was novel because it was designed to dry human milk.The aspiring engineers had been recruited by Dr. Lawrence Smith of the Boston Floating Hospital to solve …
The Emergence of the Professional Patent Practitioner
From the early republic to the present, the social networks created by successful American inventors to support their technologies have included individuals who have helped inventors mobilize the legal system. The role of the patent practitioner in this joint history of law and technology has remained largely hidden behind the myth of the lone inventor and the drama of courtroom patent battles. This paper traces patent solicitation as a professio…
Biotech in Court
This paper examines the American legal system's reliance upon the unity of science through a close study of the testimony presented in a biotech patent trial, explicated through the context of the legal practice of patent drafting and the history of the American biotechnology industry. In order to decide whether a key patent related to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invalid, the court needed to decide whether the inventing scientists had…
Biotech in Court
This paper examines the American legal system's reliance upon the unity of science through a close study of the testimony presented in a biotech patent trial, explicated through the context of the legal practice of patent drafting and the history of the American biotechnology industry. In order to decide whether a key patent related to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was invalid, the court needed to decide whether the inventing scientists had…
Human Milk as Technology and Technologies of Human Milk
In 1922, two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) undergraduates in mechanical engineering proudly presented their senior thesis, "The Design of a Machine to Powder Milk" (Young and Sutherland 1922).While machines already existed to powder bovine milk (Baumgartner 1920), their machine was novel because it was designed to dry human milk.The aspiring engineers had been recruited by Dr. Lawrence Smith of the Boston Floating Hospital to solve …
The Emergence of the Professional Patent Practitioner
From the early republic to the present, the social networks created by successful American inventors to support their technologies have included individuals who have helped inventors mobilize the legal system. The role of the patent practitioner in this joint history of law and technology has remained largely hidden behind the myth of the lone inventor and the drama of courtroom patent battles. This paper traces patent solicitation as a professio…
Body Banks
My dissertation traces the invention and development of a new form of banking, body banking. Today, the body bank as an institution that collects, stores, processes, and distributes a human body product is a taken-for-granted aspect of medicine in the United States. We donate to blood banks, we cherish sperm bank babies, and we contemplate many sorts of banks, including cord blood banks, gene banks, and egg banks. Such institutions have existed f…
Great Men,” Law, and the Social Construction of Technology
Is Alexander Graham Bell's fame owed to law and lawyers? Two recent histories argue that some popular tales of invention originated with lawyers and judges as part of patent litigation battles (Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday , Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain [2013]; Christopher Beauchamp , Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America [2015]). Bringing …
Rubbing Elbows and Blowing Smoke
The United States Patent Office of the 1850s offers a rare opportunity to analyze the early gendering of science. In its crowded rooms, would-be scientists shared a workplace with women earning equal pay for equal work. Scientific men worked as patent examiners, claiming this new occupation as scientific in opposition to those seeking to separate science and technology. At the same time, in an unprecedented and ultimately unsuccessful experiment,…
Life on Ice
Reviewed by: Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood by Joanna Radin Kara W. Swanson Joanna Radin. Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. xii + 305 pp. Ill. $40.00 (978-0-226-41731-8). Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood is a self-proclaimed story of “salvage and salvation” (p. xii). Author Joanna Radin borrows “salvage” from one of her subjects, Jacob Gruber, an anth…
Inventing the Woman Voter
In 1870, the New York State Suffrage Association published a pamphlet titled “Woman as Inventor.” White suffragists distributed this history of female invention to prove women's inventiveness, countering arguments that biological disabilities justified women's legal disabilities. In the United States, inventiveness was linked to the capacity for original thought considered crucial for voters, making female inventiveness relevant to the franchise.…
History (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · History (4 works) · Law (4 works) · American History and Culture (3 works) · Art (3 works) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis (3 works) · Art history (2 works)