Alice Dreger, Phd
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Alice Dreger, PhD Author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, a New York Times Book Review editors’ choice. Represented by: Betsy Lerner Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency (see attached for full c.v.) Alice Dreger is an historian of medicine and science, a mainstream writer, an investigative journalist, a frequent keynote speaker, and a local news publisher. An award-winning scholar and writer, Dreger’s latest major work, Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, argues that the pursuit of evidence is the most important ethical imperative of our time. Funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship and published by Penguin Press, the book has been praised in many reviews, including in The New Yorker, Nature, Science, Forbes, New York Magazine, and Salon. It was named an “Editor’s Choice” by The New York Times Book Review, where Dreger was labeled “a sharp, disruptive scholar.” The Chronicle of Higher Education has called her a “star scholar” and has described Dreger’s writing as “reliably funny and passionate and vulnerable.” Dreger earned her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University with funding through a Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She has embodied the idea of the public intellectual, simultaneously authoring widely-cited major work in scholarly journals and high-visibility essays in the mainstream press. She has served as a regular writer for the health sections of The Atlantic and Pacific Standard and for the blog of Psychology Today, and her work has appeared in numerous other venues, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, WIRED, Slate, Aeon, The LA Times, The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, and New Statesman. Her live-tweeting of her son’s Sex Ed class in April 2015 sparked an international discussion of abstinence-based education and led to her penning The Talk: Helping Your Kids Navigate Sex in the Real World, a short guidebook for parents commissioned by Amazon Kindle Singles. Besides functioning as an historian and writer, in the medical world Dreger served as a patient advocate and consultant to pediatric specialists undertaking clinical reform, particularly in the treatment of children born with norm-challenging body types. Former chair of the Intersex Society of North America, she also served as an ethics consultant to an NIH-funded Translational Research Network on pediatric intersex care and co-edited a medical education guide on LGBT and Differences of Sex Development (DSD) for the Association of American Medical Colleges. She has been on the faculty of several major universities, including most recently (2005-2015) as a full professor in Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Dreger’s TEDx lecture, “Is Anatomy Destiny,” has been viewed over one million times, and she has appeared as a guest expert on hundreds of media programs, including on Oprah, Savage Love, Good Morning America, and NPR, and in many original documentaries, including for A&E, ABC, Discovery, PBS, and HBO. A native of New York, she lives with her family in East Lansing, Michigan, where since 2014 she has been Publisher and lead government reporter for East Lansing Info, a citizen-reporter local investigative news “militia” modeled on the revolutionary idea described by David Carr. 2 Alice Dreger, PhD contact available via alicedreger.com Honors and awards, including named lectureships (for keynotes/plenaries, see below): Ryan Bioethicist-in-Residence, Southern Illinois University School of Law and School of Medicine, 2018 Elizabeth Paris Lecture for Socially-Engaged History and Philosophy of Science, History of Science Society, 2017 Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities, University of Miami, 2016 The Liliana Sauter Lecture, New York Academy of Medicine, 2016 Pauline Newman Distinguished Lecture in Science, Technology, and Society, Vassar College, 2016 Society of Midland Authors Literary Award for Best Nonfiction, for Galileo’s Middle Finger, 2016 Dresher Humanities Center Annual Korenman Lecture, Univ. Maryland Baltimore County, 2016 Finalist for Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction, for Galileo’s Middle Finger, 2016 Constance Holden Memorial Address for Distinguished Science Journalism, International Society for Intelligence Research, 2015 New York Times Book Review “Editors’ Choice” for Galileo’s Middle Finger, 2015 Outstanding Leadership Award in Comprehensive Sexuality Education, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth, GLSEN (Gay, LesBian, Straight Education Network), Healthy Teen Network, 2015 Named a “Philosopher of Note” By the American Philosophical Association, 2015 Subject of a Chronicle of Higher Education Review cover story: “Reluctant Crusader,” 2015 Fay Horton Sawyler Philosophy Lecture in Science, Technology, and Society, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2015 Named BuzzFeed “Top Read of the Week” (for a Sex Ed essay), 2014 David Green Memorial Lecture, University of Utah School of Medicine, 2013 Vern and Bonnie Bullough Memorial Lecture, University of Utah, 2012 TED lecture included on Netflix compilation (“Sex, Secrets, and Love”), 2012, over 1 million views Lawrence Badash Memorial Distinguished Lecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2011 Utne Reader “Visionary” Award, 2011 Presidential Fellow, Cornell College, 2010 Brownlee Lecture in Sexuality Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 2010 Inclusion of “Lavish Dwarf Entertainment” in W. W. Norton’s Best Creative Non-Fiction, 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 2008 C.P. Snow Distinguished Lectureship, Ithaca College, 2008 Lawson Wilkins Distinguished Lecture, Pediatric Endocrine Society, 2007 Honorary Mention Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights for One of Us, 2005 Book of the Month, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, for One of Us, 2004 Certificate of Recognition for Excellence in Diversity Programming, Office of the Provost, 3 Michigan State University, 2005 Honorary Member of the Graduating Class (seven times), for outstanding teaching, awarded by the 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2005 Graduating Classes of the Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University Distinguished Member, National Society of Collegiate Scholars, 2002 Dwight J. Ingle Memorial Award for Young Writers, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2000 Teacher-Scholar Award, Michigan State University, 2000 College of Natural Science Teacher-Scholar Award, Michigan State University 1999-2000 Esther L. Kinsley Ph.D. Thesis Award of Indiana University, 1996 Victor Thoren Advanced Graduate Student Award, History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, 1995 Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, 1994 Esther L. Kinsley Master's Thesis Award of Indiana University, 1993 Media experience (samples): Live/recorded appearances on NPR All Things Considered, NPR To the Best of Our Knowledge, NPR The Forum, BBC Horizon, BBC Radio (various programs around the U.K.), The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, CNN, CNN International, Discovery Health Channel, HBO Original Programming (“Middlesexes”), A&E documentary, Gender Talk Radio, New Zealand Radio, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (including The Current), National Broadcast News of Canada, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Savage Lovecast, Uncharted (Berkleyside), Heterodox Academy, WBEZ Morning Shift, American Freethought podcast, Science for the People podcast, The Infectious Myth podcast, Modern Notion podcast, Chicago Tonight, etc. I’ve also Been Bashed (without Being interviewed) By Rush Limbaugh; an honor. Current Project: Publisher and Foundation President for East Lansing Info (“ELi), a nonprofit citizen-reporter local news organization modeled on the revolutionary ideal articulated by David Carr. We engage the community in the production of local news, including teaching them to do investigative journalism, to stop the formation of a local “news desert” and also to promote media literacy, the valuing of journalism, and engaged citizenship. ELi is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News and LION PuBlishers. (Since ELi was incorporated in 2014, I’ve authored aBout 400 articles for the community and we’ve puBlished several thousand. More at eastlansinginfo.org.) Books authored: • Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science (Penguin Press, 2015; published paperback with a new afterword, 2016). • The Talk: Helping Your Kids Navigate Sex in the Real World (commissioned By Amazon Kindle Singles, 2016). • One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal (Harvard University Press, 2004). • Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (Harvard University Press, 1998). Books edited: • Bioethics in Action, edited with Françoise Baylis for Cambridge University Press; an 4 edited anthology of first-person accounts of trying to enact specific ethical outcomes in medicine, medical research, and public health (in press for publication May 2018). • Implementing Curricular and Institutional Climate Changes to Improve Health Care for Individuals Who Are LGBT, Gender Nonconforming, or Born with DSD: A Resource for Medical Educators, edited with Andrew D. HollenBach and Kristen L. Eckstrand (Washington, DC: Association of American Medical Colleges, 2014). • Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Disorders of Sex Development in Childhood,