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Amy Bix
Associate professor of history
abix@iastate.edu
Web Site

Amy Bix received her Ph.D. in 1994 from Johns Hopkins in the Department of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology. Since 1993, she has been a member of the History Department faculty at Iowa State University, teaching courses in general American history, in women's history, and in the history of science, technology, and medicine. She has published articles on a variety of subjects, including pieces on the history of women as eugenics research workers and on the history of funding for breast cancer and AIDS. Her book Inventing Ourselves Out of Jobs?: America's Debate Over Technological Umemployment, 1929-1981 was published by Johns Hopkins University in 2000.

Her current research project focuses on the history of engineering education for American women, tracing how, when and why institutions such as Iowa State, MIT, RPI, Cornell, Caltech and other universities began admitting women to engineering programs. The study touches on questions about the gendered nature of technical knowledge and about the boundaries of professionalization. Bix has published articles on this subject in Women's Studies Quarterly (spring/summer, 2000: Feminism Where Men Predominate: The History of Women's Science and Engineering Education at MIT) and in the IEEE Science and Society Magazine (Spring, 2000: "Engineeresses" Invade Campus: Four Decades of Debate Over Technical Codeucation).

She teaches a course every year or so at ISU on the history of women in science, technology, and medicine as well as teaching ISU's course on American women's history.