Jenna Tonn

Assistant Professor of the Practice, Director of Undergraduate Studies

Profile

Professor Tonn teaches courses on the history of science, technology, and engineering. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of technical knowledge, with a specific interest in women and gender in STEM fields. Currently, Professor Tonn is working on a book, Boys in the Lab: Masculinity and the Rise of the American Life Sciences, about the relationship between manliness, experimental biology, and feelings of belonging in modern science. Her research specialties include histories of women, gender, and sexuality in modern science and technology; the interplay between engineers and engineering practices and the infrastructure of everyday life; and the relationship between design, technology, and justice.  

Professor Tonn joins the Department of Engineering after four years of teaching interdisciplinary courses at Boston College as a Core Fellow. She has collaborated with faculty from around Boston College to design and teach a number of Core Complex Problems and Enduring Questions courses, including: “Making the Modern World: Design, Ethics, and Engineering,” “Science, Technology, and American Society,” “Who Are You? The Science and Sociology of Self,” and “Nature on Exhibit: From Sea Monsters to SeaWorld.” Hallmarks of Professor Tonn’s history-forward interdisciplinary teaching style involve integrating technology and quantitative methods into the history classroom, co-teaching with faculty from engineering and the natural sciences, and designing collaborative, multidisciplinary group projects that encourage students to thoughtfully and critically produce new knowledge about the world around them. She is committed to incorporating reflective practices into the classroom as important opportunities for inclusive learning and student formation. Prior to coming to Boston College, Professor Tonn received her Ph.D. in History of Science from Harvard University and her B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University. Professor Tonn also has a courtesy appointment in the History Department.

Selected Publications

  • An Integrated Engineering/History/Ethics First-Year Experience at Boston College with Jonathan S. Krones and Russell C. Powell. Paper presented at the 2021 First-Year Engineering Experience Virtual Conference.   
  • Integrating History and Engineering in the First-Year Core Curriculum at Boston College with Jonathan S. Krones and Russell C. Powell. Paper presented at the 2021 American Society of Engineering Education Virtual Annual Conference.
  • Review of Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father by Nara B. Milanich (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019), Isis (forthcoming).
  • “,” The Immanent Frame, Forum on Religion and Reproductive Science, Social Science Research Council (2020).
  • “Domesticated Animals on Display at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 1900-1928,” Endeavor (published online May 2019).
  •  “Laboratory of Domesticity: Gender, Race, and Science at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, 1903-1930,” History of Science 57 (2019): 231-259.  
  • “Gender” in Encyclopedia of the History of Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 2019.
  • “Historical Vignette: Elizabeth Hodges Clark” in Museum of Comparative Zoology Annual Report, 2017-2018 (Harvard University: Office of the Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 2019), p. 11.  
  • “Extralaboratory Life: Gender Politics and Experimental Biology at Radcliffe College, 1894-1910,” Gender & History 29 (August 2017): 329-58.
  • Review of The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu. Season 1 (April-June 2017). Television. Journal of the History of Biology 51, no. 2 (2018): 415-17.
  • “Science for the Masses,” review of Life on Display: Revolutionizing U.S. Museums of Science and Natural History in the Twentieth Century by Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain, Endeavor 40, no. 4 (2016): 217.