The Life Sciences & Society Program welcomes Stefani Engelstein as program Director beginning in Fall 2009. She is assisted by a steering committee.

Under Engelstein’s leadership, the LSSP will further its mission by facilitating interdisciplinary research, coordinating graduate and undergraduate courses on life science / society intersections, hosting an annual symposium that brings scholars of international renown to campus, and collaborating with the community.

Engelstein is an Associate Professor of German whose research focuses on German and British literature and the life sciences, particularly in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. She investigates the significance of shifting understandings of the human body in literature, natural history, surgery, aesthetics, and art for emerging theories of human subjectivity, gender, volition, ethical behavior, and political organization. Engelstein’s research provides insight into ongoing cultural debates about medical technologies, evolution, race, family constellations, and gender.

Anxious Anatomy: The Conception of the Human Form in Literary and Naturalist Discourse (SUNY Press, 2008)

LSSP Leadership History
Professors Phil Peters and Leonie Marks directed the LSSP over the 2000-06 period, followed by Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes from 2006-07.
An active steering committee of fourteen people from six schools and twelve departments was instrumental to the establishment of the program.