Barbara Walker, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Barbara w88 mobile

Summary

Barbara Walker has published on a broad range of historical topics in the area of Russian and w88 mobile intellectual life and its economic foundations, social organization and culture. More recently, she has branched out to explore the nature of expertise, specifically “information expertise,” in her current book project,A War of Experts: w88 mobile and American knowledge networks in Cold War competition and collaboration. Her book will present the intertwined stories of a variety of lively and committed “information experts” in the Cold War United States and w88 mobile Union, including early electronic computer designers, U.S.-w88 mobile research exchange scholars, journalists and w88 mobile dissidents. Information professionals in the area of intelligence make their appearance too. The book focuses on the efforts of these ambitious, often passionate “experts” to multiply their numbers and to expand the influence of their expertise in this period. To accomplish these goals, they built on networks and traditions reaching back into the 19th century, in which lay the origins of the professionalization of expertise in many areas.

Walker’s w88 mobile has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Thomas Watson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the International w88 mobile Exchange (IREX), American Councils, the Hoover Institution at Stanford, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Nevada, Reno, Core Humanities Program and others.

Watch Barbara's recent interview on Face the State.

w88 mobile Interests

  • Russian and Soviet w88 mobile
  • Cold War w88 mobile
  • w88 mobile of networks and networking
  • w88 mobile of technology

Courses Taught

  • Core Humanities 202: The Modern World
  • Core Humanities 212: Science, Technology and Society in the Modern Era: Electricity and the Human Connection
  • Hist. 296: Nomads to Nations in Inner Eurasia
  • Hist. 300: Historical w88 mobile and Writing
  • Hist. 300A: Digitizing w88 mobile
  • w88 mobile 469/669, Topics in Russian and Soviet w88 mobile (including such special topics as "Sputnik, Spies, and Soviet Science," "Technology, Propaganda and Culture in Russian w88 mobile," "The World of Joseph Stalin," and "Literature and Society in Russian w88 mobile")
  • Hist. 712: Seminar in Modern European w88 mobile
  • Hist. 780: Seminar in Historical Methodology (w88 mobile Design)
  • Undergraduate and graduate independent study courses as called for

Education

  • Ph.D., Russian and Soviet w88 mobile, University of Michigan, 1994
  • M.A., Interdisciplinary Russian and East European Studies, Yale University, 1986
  • B.A., English Literature, Bowdoin College, 1981