Jeffrey P. Moran

Professor Moran (Ph.D. Harvard, 1996) has been broadly interested in the origins, power, and limits of secular modernity in twentieth-century America. His first book, Teaching Sex (Harvard, 2000), looks at the history of sex education as an instance of the therapeutic state’s extension into the most intimate realms of private life, but it traces as well the surprising vigor of the forces ranged against this “intrusion.” While continuing his connection to the history of sexuality, Moran has since focused on the history of evolution in the United States – a subject of particular relevance to his adopted state of Kansas. His work on the national and international controversies over evolution, including the Tennessee Scopes Trial of 1925, has been noteworthy for its use of gender, race, and geography to rearrange our framework for understanding the apparently “eternal” tension between science and religion. He is currently developing a project on the politics of medical quackery, and is interested in developing greater expertise in the history of religion.