Kimberly Hamlin’s research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century U.S. cultural history, women's and gender history, and the history of science. Her current research project, “Beyond Adam’s Rib,” examines the U.S. reception of Darwin through the lens of gender and argues that evolutionary theory fundamentally redefined gender and sex by facilitating a shift from biblical to scientific gender paradigms. Prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), debates about women’s proper role most often focused on conflicting interpretations of Eve in the Garden of Eden and other biblical prescriptions for gendered behavior. Darwin’s work not only challenged biblical literalism, it also offered a new, scientific way to think about the origins of men, women, and reproduction. “Beyond Adam’s Rib” seeks to place evolutionary doctrine more firmly in the history of women’s rights rhetoric and, at the same time, enrich our understanding of Darwin in America by focusing on his theories’ ramifications for gender and sex.
Hamlin’s future research projects build on her interest in gender, science, religion, and popular culture. Her next book-length project will be a study of popular and scientific theories of sex determination (what determines the sex of a fetus in utero) from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. She is also working on a biography of freethinking women’s rights activist Helen Hamilton Gardener who donated her brain to Cornell University in 1925 to prove that women’s brains were not inferior to men’s.
Previously, Hamlin has researched the history of the Girl Scouts, served as historical consultant on the PBS documentary film “Troop 1500,” and published “Bathing Suits and Backlash: The First Miss America Pageants, 1921-1927,” in “There She Is, Miss America”: The Politics of Sex, Gender, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant, eds. Elwood Watson and Darcy Martin (New York: Palgrave/St. Martin’s, 2004). |
