Tara Abraham
Professor
College of Arts, Department of History
Education
Ph.D. University of Toronto, 2000
M.A. University of Toronto, 1996
B.Sc. (Honours) McMaster University, 1992
Areas of Graduate Supervision
history of medicine
history of psychiatry
history of science and technology
history of the human sciences
My current book project, funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant, examines the entry of psychiatry into the medical school curriculum in early 20th-century America. Using Harvard University's medical school as a case study, I am interested in the rhetoric psychiatrists used to promote their field as a medical specialty and how this translated into their aims of pedagogical reform. I also take the rise of psychiatry as a medical specialty as contingent on society and culture during this period--particularly the rise of new patient populations--and explore the relations between education and the construction of medical expertise.
Professional
University of Guelph, Department of History, 2006-
York University, Programme in Science and Technology Studies,
Assistant Professor, 2004-06
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany,
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2002-04
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, MIT,
Postdoctoral Fellow, 2000-02
Past President, Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, 2025-2028
Courses Taught in 2025-26
HIST*4200 Health, Mind, and Body
HIST*3310 Disease and History
Publications
books
Rebel Genius: Warren S. McCulloch's Transdisciplinary Life in Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016).
edited volumes
Editor, "Warren S. McCulloch and His Circle," guest-edited issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 37, no. 3 (September 2012).
articles and book chapters (selected)
"Standard assessments", Invited Contribution to Symposium on James Elwick, Making a Grade: Victorian Examinations and the Rise of Standardized Testing. (Toronto, 2021). In Metascience (2022) 31: 331-335.
“The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics: Re-instantiating the Mind,” History and Systems of Psychology, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology (Oxford), April 2020.
"Cybernetics", Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind, edited by Martin Sprevak and Matteo Colombo (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 52-64.
"Psychiatry in American medical education: The case of Harvard's medical school, 1900-1945," Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (2018) 35(1): 63-93.
"Between the mind twist and the brain spot: The material dimensions of psychopathology in the work of Elmer E. Southard," Nuncius: Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science (2017) 32(2): 261-285.
“Modelling the mind: The case of Warren S. McCulloch,” Canadian Medical Association Journal (2016) 188 (13): 974-975.
“Transcending Disciplines: Scientific Styles in Studies of the Brain in Mid-Twentieth Century America,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2012) 43: 552-68.
Funding
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Insight Grant, 2018-2023
Standard Research Grant, 2007-2011
Awards and Fellowships
Visiting Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2014
Associated Scholar, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, 2014-15
American Philosophical Society Library Fellowship, 2003
Invited Lectures (Selected)
"Warren S. McCulloch, the Illinois Neuropsychiatric Institute, and American Psychiatry, 1941-1952", 25th Annual Boshes Lectureship, Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago, 25 April 2019.
"The Misfits: Warren S. McCulloch, Psychiatry, and Disciplinary Legitimacy in Twentieth-Century American Medicine," History and Theory of Psychology Department Colloquium, York University, September 2017
“On the Uses of Scientific Biography: Warren McCulloch and American Cybernetics”, Science and Technology Studies Seminar Series, York University, Toronto, October 2014
“Rebel Genius? Warren McCulloch, Autobiography, and American Cybernetics”, Sixth Annual Symposium on History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science, Technology and Medicine, Ryerson University, Toronto, May 2014
Presentations (selected)
"Transmitting Psychiatric Knowledge and Skill: Encounters Between Students, Patients, and Teachers, c. 1870-1900" History of Science Society/European Society for the History of Science Joint Meeting, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 2026
"Textbooks, Pedagogy, and the Case Method in Early 20th-Century American Psychiatry," Canadian Society for the History of Medicine, McGill University, June 2024
“Transforming Psychiatry in American Medical Education: The Role of the Commonwealth Fund, 1900-1945,” Canadian Society for the History of Medicine, University of Regina, May 2018
"Between the Mind Twist and the Brain Spot: The Material Dimensions of Psychopathology in the Work of Elmer E. Southard," Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, Ryerson University, May 2017
“The Sciences of Brain and Mind in American Medical Education: Psychiatry, Neurology, and Harvard’s Medical School, 1900-1945”, History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2016