Faculty and Staff
Sharra Vostral
Sharra Vostral’s research centers upon the history of technology in relation to gender and women’s bodies and the ways in which material artifacts functioned in people’s everyday lives. Her forthcoming book, Under Wraps: Menstrual Hygiene and Technologies of Passing (Rowman and Littlefield) is a social history of menstrual hygiene technologies, which extends the notion of passing into a new area of inquiry, drawing on and contributing to scholarship in science and technology studies, women’s history, and the history of medicine. She is also co-editing a volume entitled Feminist Technology? Case Studies in Designing Technologies for Women’s Bodies, a collection of essays that explore the possibilities of using feminist approaches to designing new technologies.
Her teaching interests include gender and technoculture, U.S. women’s history, and social history and material culture in the twentieth century. She is developing an internship program and course focusing on public engagement and public service with the non-profit sector.
Before arriving at Illinois, Sharra Vostral was an assistant professor in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She received her Ph.D. in History from Washington University in St. Louis (2000), and holds an MA in American Studies from St. Louis University (1992). She completed her BA at the University of Michigan in Comparative Religion and English (1990).
Visit Prof. Vostral's web site: http://www.vostral.com