About Me:
I am an Associate Professor of History and the current Belle K. Ribicoff Endowed Professor at the University of Hartford, where I teach courses on race, gender, and sexuality in the United States.
My first book, Beauty and the Brain: The Science of Human Nature in Early America, was published with the University of Chicago Press in November 2022. It explores the history of physiognomy and phrenology: two popular sciences based on the idea that people’s heads and faces could reveal their intelligence, character, and personality. Beauty and the Brain won the Mary Kelley Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) in 2023.
I am now working on my second book, Free Radicals: Fringe Thinkers and the Fight for Liberty in Nineteenth-Century America. This project explores the connections between abolition, women’s rights, and unorthodox forms of science and religion.
Rachel E. Walker, Ph.D. 