My research focuses on the connections between popular science and progressive politics the early American republic.
Beauty and the Brain: The Science of Human Nature in Early America (University of Chicago Press, 2022):
My first book explores the history of physiognomy & phrenology in the United States. These once popular—but now discredited—disciplines were rooted in a deceptively simple premise: that people’s faces and skulls could reveal their inner character.
Recognition for Beauty and the Brain:
- Winner, Mary Kelley Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR)
- Finalist, Frederick Jackson Turner Prize, Organization of American Historians (OAH)
- Finalist, Cheiron Book Prize, International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences
Other Publications:
“Reading the Gendered Body in Early America,” in The Gendered Republic: Reimagining Identity in the New Nation, edited by Craig Thompson Friend and Lorri Glover (University of Virginia Press, 2026).
“Facing Race: Popular Science and Black Intellectual Thought in Antebellum America,” Early American Studies 19, no. 3 (Summer 2021): 601–640.
Winner, John M. Murrin Prize for the best article published in Early American Studies in 2021.
Rachel E. Walker, Ph.D. 