David Serlin

Author photo © Catherine Opie

David Serlin (pronouns: he/him) is Professor of Communication at UC San Diego, where he is a core faculty in Science Studies and affiliated faculty in Critical Gender Studies. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (FAAR ’21), where he was awarded the Rome Prize in Architecture in 2020.

Professor Serlin’s research interests include historical and cultural approaches to disability, technology, and the politics of design; architecture, urbanism, and the built environment; material culture, museums, and archives; scientific and aesthetic histories of the senses, especially touch, smell, and cognition; and feminist, crip, and queer theories of embodiment, experience, and subjectivity. You can see more of Professor Serlin’s research at: https://davidserlin.academia.edu/research

In January 2025, Professor Serlin’s latest book, Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture was published (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo239041380.html). The culmination of over ten years of archival research, the book examines the sensorial and experiential worlds of people with disabilities through the medium of architecture decades before the disability rights movement of the late 1960s standardized now-familiar terms like “access” and “accommodation.” The book uses historical case studies to reassess modern architecture and urban culture by putting people with disabilities and their subjective experiences at the generative center, rather than assuming (as so many do) that their disabilities precluded them from participating in modern culture, drawing upon fields as diverse as architectural history, disability studies, media archaeology, sensory studies, urban anthropology, and feminist science studies. The first two chapters examine the spatial and sensory entanglements of well-known historical figures such as Joseph Merrick (the “Elephant Man”) in London and Helen Keller in New York and Paris, while the last two chapters focus on institutions and agencies: the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s and 1940s, and Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman’s Illinois Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, opened in 1978. The chapters challenge and complicate conventional narratives of urban modernity by demonstrating how the subjective experiences of people with disabilities encouraged architects and designers to develop a design ethos decades ahead of its time. This ethos planted the seeds for recent concepts such as inclusive design, user-centered design, and what some disability theorists have called crip design. You can learn more about the book at https://windowshoppingwithhelenkeller.com/

Professor Serlin’s other books include Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2004), which was awarded the inaugural Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize from the Modern Language Association; Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (co-editor; NYU Press, 2002); Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (editor; University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Keywords for Disability Studies (co-editor; NYU Press, 2015); and The Routledge History of American Sexuality (co-editor; Routledge, 2020). He is a founding editor of the online journal Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience (https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst) and an editor-at-large for the art and culture journal Cabinet (https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/). 

BOOKS

Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2025.

The Routledge History of American Sexuality. Co-Editor. New York and London: Routledge. 2020.

Keywords for Disability Studies. Co-Editor. New York: New York University Press. 2015.

Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture. Editor. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. 2010.

Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2004. 2005 Alan Bray Memorial Book Award from the Modern Language Association. 2006 Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics. Co-Editor. New York: New York University Press. 2002.

Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism. Co-Editor. Boston: South End Press. 1996. Winner of the 1997 Gustavus Myers Center Award for an Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in North America.

EDITED JOURNALS

Co-editor (with Ignacio Galán), special issue on “Designing for Disability Futures,” Journal of Design History (forthcoming).

Co-editor (with Kelly Fritsch, Aimi Hamraie, and Mara Mills), special issue on “Crip Technoscience,” Catalyst vol. 5, no. 1 (April 2019).

Co-editor (with Simon Schaffer and Jennifer Tucker), special issue on “Political Histories of Technoscience,” Radical History Review 127 (January 2017).

Co-editor (with Amy Chazkel), special issue on “New Approaches to Enclosures,” Radical History Review 109 (Winter 2011).

Co-editor (with Amy Chazkel), special issue on “Enclosures: Fences, Walls, and Contested Spaces,” Radical History Review 108 (Fall 2010).

Co-editor (with Kevin Murphy and Jason Ruiz), special issue on “Queer Futures,” Radical History Review 100 (Winter 2008).

Co-editor (with Teresa Meade), special issue on “Disability and History,” Radical History Review 94 (Winter 2006).

Co-editor (with Kavita Philip and Eliza Jane Reilly), special issue on “Homeland Securities,” Radical History Review 93 (Fall 2005).

Co-editor (with Eliza Jane Reilly), special issue on “Race, Nation, and Cultural Memory,” Radical History Review 90 (Fall 2004).

RESEARCH ARTICLES, CRITICAL ESSAYS, AND BOOK CHAPTERS

“Helen Keller and the Burden of Wonder.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 67:4 (Autumn 2024). 588–595.

“Disabling Modernism.” Places Journal (May 2024): https://placesjournal.org/article/modernist-schools-for-disabled-children-new-deal-era/

In Conversation: Wanda Liebermann and David Serlin. Edited and expanded text of public lecture delivered for the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, April 15, 2021. Published and distributed by the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts/Harvard University. 2023.

“The Politics of Friction: Designing a Sex Toy for Every Body.” In After Universal Design: The Disability Design Revolution, ed. Elizabeth Guffey. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. 35-40.

“Unfixed: Materializing Disability and Queerness in Three Objects” (with Kate Clark). In Turning Archival: The Life of the Historical in Queer Studies, eds. Daniel Marshall and Zeb Tortorici. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. 259-283.

“Virgin Territories: A Conversation with Roland Betancourt.” Radical History Review 142 (January 2022). 119-132.

“Guns, Germs, and Public History: A Conversation with Jennifer Tucker.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2021 Feb; 57(1): 60-74, https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22055

“Banking on Postmodernism: Saving Stanley Tigerman’s Illinois Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.” Future Anterior 16:1 (Summer 2019). 86-108.

“Toward a Crip Methodology for Critical Disability Studies” (with Louise Hickman). In Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability: Looking Toward the Future, eds. Mike Kent, Katie Ellis, Rachel Roberson, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson. New York and London: Routledge, 2019. 131-141.

“Bodies.” In The Routledge History of Queer America, ed. Don Romesburg. New York and London: Routledge, 2018. 135-147.

“Introduction.” In Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity, eds. Kathleen Brian and James Trent. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 1-24.

“The Queer Art of James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas.” In James ‘Son Ford’ Thomas: The Devil and His Blues, ed. Jonathan Berger and Jessica Iannuzzi Garcia. New York: Karma, 2017. 113-120.

“Science and the Senses: Deviation.” In Correspondences, Cultural Anthropology (February 17, 2017), https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1070-science-and-the-senses-deviation

“Confronting African Histories of Technology: A Conversation with Keith Breckenridge and Gabrielle Hecht.” Radical History Review 127 (January 2017). 86-102.

“The Land Beneath Our Feet: An Interview with Gregg Mitman.” Radical History Review 127 (Winter 2017). 186-201.

“‘Yours is a Different Understanding of Architecture’: Helen Keller’s House in Easton, Connecticut.” Essay commissioned by the Helen Keller Digitization Project, http://www.afb.org/blog/afb-blog/yours-is-a-different-understanding-of-architecture-helen-keller%E2%80%99s-house-in-easton-connecticut/12 (July 2016).

“Helen Keller in Paris: Tourism, Nostalgia, and Memory.” Essay commissioned by the Helen Keller Digitization Project, http://www.afb.org/blog/afb-blog/helen-keller-in-paris-tourism-nostalgia-and-memory/12 (July 2015).

“Disability” (with Rachel Adams and Benjamin Reiss). In Keywords for Disability Studies, ed. Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin. New York: New York University Press, 2015. 5-11.

 “The Marshall Nirenberg Charts: The ‘First Summary.’” Exhibition curated for the National Library of Medicine’s Turning the Pages project, http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/nirenberg/nirenberg-chart11.html  (March 2015).

“Constructing Autonomy: Smart Homes for Disabled Veterans and the Politics of Normative Citizenship.” Critical Military Studies 1:1 (February 2015). 38-46. 

“These Were Once Kings and Queens in Wax.” Cabinet 54 (Fall 2014), 7-11.

“Proliferating Cripistemologies.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 8:2 (2014). 149-169.

“Reshaping History: The Intersection of Radical and Women’s History.” Journal of Women’s History 25:4 (Winter 2013). 13-45.

“The Broken Circuit” (with Lauren Berlant and Sina Najafi). In Reading/Feeling, ed. Tanja Baudoin, Frédérique Bergholtz, and Vivian Ziherl. Amsterdam: Idea Books, 2013. 375-383.

“How to Be Yourself in Public.” In Zoe Wool, ed., “Soldier Exposures in Technical Publics,” a collaborative visual essay published on Public Books, media website for Public Culture, http://publicbooks.org/artmedia/soldier-exposures-and-technical-publics (February 2013).

“On Walkers and Wheelchairs: Disabling the Narratives of Urban Modernity.” Radical History Review 114 (Fall 2012). 19-28.

“Carney Landis and the Psychosexual Landscape of Touch in Mid-Twentieth-Century America.” History of Psychology 15:3 (August 2012). 209-216. Honorable Mention for Outstanding Article from the Disability History Association (2013).

“Architecture and Social Justice: Independent Living on Campus.” Boom: A Journal of California 2:1 (Spring 2012). 53-54.

“Touching Histories: Personality, Disability, and Sex in the 1930s.” In Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow, eds., Sex and Disability (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 145-162.

“Pissing Without Pity: Disability, Gender, and the Public Toilet.” In Harvey Molotch and Laura Norén, eds., Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 167-185. [Reprinted in Jos Boys, ed., Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 213-226.] A

“Toward a Visual Culture of Public Health: From Broadside to YouTube.” In David Serlin, ed., Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xi-xxxvii.

“Performing Live Surgery on Television and the Internet Since 1945.” In David Serlin, m med., Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 223-244.

“Endocrinology” and “Prosthetics.” Entries in Susan Burch and Katherine Ott, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Disability History (New York: Facts on File, 2009).

“The Other Arms Race.” In Lennard J. Davis, ed., The Disability Studies Reader, 2^nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 49-65.

“Disabling the Flâneur.” Journal of Visual Culture 5:2 (August 2006), 193-208. [Reprinted, in excerpted form, in Jos Boys, ed., Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 13-21.]

“Making Disability Public.” Radical History Review 94 (Winter 2006), 197-211.

“Disability, Masculinity, and the Prosthetics of War, 1945 to 2005.” In Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra, eds., The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 155-183.

“Can a Building Be Jewish?” Architecture 93:7 (July 2004), 23-26.

“Bathhouses,” “Gladys Bentley,” “Christine Jorgensen,” and “John Money and Anke Ehrhardt.” Entries in Marc Stein, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004).

“Crippling Masculinity: Queerness and Disability in U.S. Military Culture, 1800-1945.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9:1/2 (Winter/Spring 2003), 149-179.

“Rethinking the Corporate Biosphere: The Social Ecology of Sustainable Architecture.” In David Gissen, ed., Big and Green: Sustainable Urban Architecture for the 21^st Century (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), 136-145.

“Engineering Masculinity: Veterans and Prosthetics After World War Two.” In Katherine Ott, David Serlin, and Stephen Mihm, eds., Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (New York: NYU Press, 2002), 45-74.

“From Sesame Street to Schoolhouse Rock: Urban Pedagogy and Soul Iconography During the 1970s.” In Richard Green and Monique Guillory, eds., Soul: Black Power, Politics, and Pleasure (New York: NYU Press, 1998), 105-20.

“Weegee and the Jewish Question” (with Jesse Lerner). Wide Angle 19:4 (Fall 1997), 94-108

“The Twilight (Zone) of Commercial Sex.” In Dangerous Bedfellows, eds., Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism (Boston: South End Press, 1996), 45-52.

“Christine Jorgensen and the Cold War Closet.” Radical History Review 62 (Spring 1995), 136-165. [Reprinted in Kathy Peiss, ed., Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 384-393.]

“The Dialogue of Gender in Melville's The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids.” Modern Language Studies 25:2 (Spring 1995), 80-87.

Frequently Taught Courses

• Advanced Approaches to Science Studies
• American Television in the 1970s
• Architecture as Communication
• Historical Methods in Communication Research
• How to Have a Conversation
• Introduction to LGBTQ Studies
• Media Archaeology
• The Politics of Bodies
• Public History and Museum Studies
• Smells Like Epistemology: Sensory Studies Meets Science Studies
• Touch as Communication
• Visual Culture