Helen Anne Curry
Helen Anne Curry
Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow, 2011-2012
- E-mail: hcurry-at-chemheritage-dot-org
- Phone: 215.873.8240
Helen Curry is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Yale University. She will join CHF as a visiting scholar, while bringing her dissertation, “Accelerating Evolution, Engineering Life,” to conclusion as a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow.
Current Research
Curry’s dissertation offers a history of the development, application, and public reception in the United States of early technologies of genetic modification in plants. It explores how scientists, breeders, and lay observers at mid-century came to view methods that produced mutations—whether an X-ray directed at dormant seeds, a chemical applied to flower buds, or a piece of radioactive cobalt placed in a field of crops—as agricultural tools. The project highlights a widespread belief that mutagens, by enabling breeders to produce genetic variations “at will,” would enable humans to speed up the pace of evolutionary change and engineer plants and animals “to order.”
Her other current research projects include a history of General Electric’s involvement in agricultural and genetics research in the 1920s and 1930s (an early moment in the development of industrial agro-biotechnology), and an investigation of efforts made to save the American chestnut tree from blight in the 20th century.