Victoria Cain
Associate Professor of History
Victoria Cain is a social and cultural historian of the twentieth century United States. She takes special interest in the history of education, media, and technology. Her most recent book, Schools and Screens: A Watchful History (MIT Press, 2021), chronicles controversies over the rise and use of screen media technologies in twentieth-century American schools. She is also the author, with Karen Rader, of the award-winning Life on Display: Revolutionizing Museums of Science and Nature in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2014), a social history of exhibition in U.S. museums of science and nature. Cain has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and her research has been supported by the National Academy of Education and the American Association of University Women.
Her latest project, Revealing Practices, investigates the history of adolescent privacy in the United States during the long twentieth century.
- Stanton Foundation Course Development Grant, 2020-2021
- History of Education Society Outstanding Book Award, 2015; for the most outstanding book in the field published in the previous year
- Spencer Foundation Small Research Grant, 2015-2016
- American Educational Research Association Division F New Scholar Book Award, 2014;
- Northeastern Humanities Center Fellowship, 2015-2016
- History of Education Society Prize for the most distinguished scholarly essay in educational history published in any journal over the previous two-year period, 2015;
- Mellon / Shoah Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Visual History, University of Southern California, 2007-2009
- National Academy of Education / Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2008-2009
- Visiting Scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2006-2007
- “From Sesame Street to Prime Time School Television: Educational Media in the Wake of the Coleman Report,” History of Education Quarterly v. 57, no. 4, 2017, 590-601.
- “Present Tense: Histories of Science in Boston’s Museums,” invited contribution, special issue on “Histories of Science in Museums”, Isis, v. 108, no. 2, 2017, 381-389.
- “The Changing Roles of Museums,” co-authored with Karen Rader, Oxford Handbook on the Science of Science Communication, ed. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dietram Scheufele, and Dan Kahan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
- “Seeing the World: Media and Vision in U.S. Geography Classrooms, 1890-1930,” Early Popular Visual Culture, special issue on Histories of Educational Media, v. 13, no. 4, 2015, 276-292 (published online, 07 Dec 2015).
- Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History, co-authored with Karen Rader. University of Chicago Press (2014).
- Republication of “From natural history to science: Display and the transformation of American museums of science and nature,” co-authored with Karen Rader, chapter in Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, 2nd edition, ed. Bettina Carbonell (New York: Wiley-Blackwell), 2012.
- “Attraction, Attention, and Desire: Consumer Culture as Pedagogical Paradigm in Museums in the United States, 1900-1930,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, June 20, 2012, DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2012.667422.
- “The Craftsmanship Aesthetic: Showing Making at the American Museum of Natural History, 1910-45,” The Journal of Modern Craft, v. 5, no. 1, March 2012, pp. 25-50
- “Professor Carter’s Cabin: Amateur Collectors and Natural History Museums,” Common-place, vol. 12, no. 2, January 2012.
- “‘An Indirect Influence Upon Industry: Rockefeller Philanthropies and the Development of Educational Film in the United States, 1935-53,” chapter in Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States, ed. Marsha Orgeron, Devin Orgeron and Dan Streible (New York: Oxford University Press), 2011.
- “The Art of Authority: Exhibits, Exhibit Makers and the Contest for Scientific Status at the American Museum of Natural History, 1920-1940,” Science in Context, special issue on “Lay Observation in the Life Sciences,” vol. 24, issue 2, April 2011, pp. 215-238.
- “‘The Direct Medium of the Vision’: Visual Education, Virtual Witnessing and the American Museum of Natural History, 1890-1923,” Journal of Visual Culture, special issue on “Capturing the Moment: Visual Evidence and Eyewitnessing,” v. 10, no. 3, December 2010.
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Education
PhD in History, Columbia University
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Contact
617.373.4444 v.cain@northeastern.edu -
Address
209 Meserve Hall
360 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
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HIST 1200 / 1201: First Year Seminar
HIST 1200 / HIST 1201
Provides an introduction to historical methods, research, writing, and argument in which all students produce a substantial research project that passes through at least two revisions, and that is presented publicly to other members of the colloquium.
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HIST 1357: History of Information in the United States
HIST 1357
In an age of digital media, deepfakes, and data surveillance, information is a fraught concept. While it’s tempting to see anxieties about information as new, Americans struggled with the ethics and politics of information long before tweeting or TikTok. Information has a history, one shaped and scarred by society and culture. By diving deep into the history of information in the United States, and by paying close attention to the laws, technologies, and politics that surround its collection and use, students will develop more sophisticated understandings of ongoing controversies over information and big data.
HIST 1190: Picturing Modernity, The Photographic Image in Culture and Society
HIST 1190
Explores the role of the photographic image in culture and society from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Examines how the photographic image has altered cultural and perceptual patterns across the globe and investigates how cultural and social power have been influenced by photographs. Offers students an opportunity to read a cross-section of criticism, theory, and history and to study images and exhibitions to analyze how culture and history have been affected by and reflected in photographic images.
