Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Chair for the History of Science

On leave: Susanne Schmidt is a research fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina at the Department of History at Stanford University (2023–2024). 

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Vita

Susanne Schmidt is an Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in history at Humboldt University, where she studies the history of the cognitive, behavioral and social sciences. Her book Midlife Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2020) provides the first historical study of the controversial concept of midlife crisis, which gained traction as a feminist idea in the United States in the 1970s before it was redefined by psychologists and psychiatrists. Susanne received her Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge in 2018. She was an Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in Global History at Free University Berlin (2018–20) and Tandem Fellow in History of Knowledge & Knowledge Cultures at the German Historical Institute and Georgetown University, Washington, DC (2019–20), and a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, and the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University.

Susanne received the first-book award of the German History of Science Society (GWMT) and the prize for the best article published in N.T.M. (both 2021) and a Career Development Award at the Berlin University Alliance (2021–22); her research has been supported by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (German Academic Scholarship Foundation), Max Weber Foundation, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Kurt Hahn Trust, and others.

Susanne is currently a research fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina at the Department of History at Stanford University.

Research interests

• History of science, technology and medicine, esp. the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences
• History of gender and feminism
• History of expertise & science in public
• US history, Caribbean, and Latin American history
• Psychological humanities

Research Projects

The Marshmallow Test: Candy, Race, and Personality in Social Science, 1950–today

This book project historicizes the construction of self-control as a fundamental capacity that, if acquired early, can be of benefit in later life. It investigates the history of the marshmallow test, the definitive procedure for assessing self-control in children and young adolescents, who are given one marshmallow (or other treat) right away—or two if they wait. The project traces the marshmallow test from its first instalments in the 1950s to current debates about replicability, looking at research conducted especially in the US, the Caribbean and Latin America.
 

Fashion: A Keyword in Social Thought, 1850–today

“Fashion” refers to the latest style of clothing, but the term has also been used to describe and evaluate changing social and ethical norms, cultural habits, patterns of behaviour, and even political attitudes and scientific theory. This project examines fashion as a catchword in social thought, asking for its changing meanings and function in nineteenth- and twentieth-century legal thought and political theory, cultural history, sociology, mass communication and survey research. Making visible an ambiguous, broad notion of fashion in which the material and the conceptual intersect, this research contributes to an understanding of fashion as an ethical, economic, political, and epistemological concept.

Publications

Monograph

• Midlife Crisis: The Feminist Origins of a Chauvinist Cliché (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
  Reviewed in American Historical Review; Journal of American History; Social History of Medicine; Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences; N.T.M. Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine; European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health; HSozKult; The New Republic; Times Literary Supplement and Medium. 'Recommended' by the American Library Association (Choice). Excerpted in Lapham's Quarterly. Foreign translations: Japanese (Newton Press, 2021); German (Goldmann, in preparation). First-book award of the German History of Science Society (Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Wissenschaften, der Medizin und der Technik).

Special Issues/Edited Collections

• co-edited with Lisa Malich, "Cocooning. Umwelt und Geschlecht in den Sozial-, Human- und Lebenswissenschaften seit 1800" [Cocooning: Environment and Gender in Social Thought and the Human Sciences, 1800–today], N.T.M. Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine 29 (2021), no. 1.
• co-edited with Max Stadler, Niki Rhyner et al., "Gegen/Wissen", cache: Magazin für die Geschichte und Gegenwart der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt 1.
  Reviewed in Der Freitag.
   

Journal Articles

• "Über die vergessenen Anfänge des Marshmallow-Tests" [The Forgotten Origins of the Marshmallow Test], Psychologische Rundschau 73 (2022), no. 3, 204–205.
• "Cocooning: Umwelt und Geschlecht. Einleitung" [Cocooning: Environment and Gender. Introduction] (with Lisa Malich), N.T.M. Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine 29 (2021), no. 1, 1–10.
• "Umwelt-Sein: Mutterschaft, Entwicklung und Psychologie, 1930-1900" [Environmentality: Motherhood, Development, and Psychology, 1930-1990], N.T.M. Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine 29 (2021), no. 1, 77–112.
  N.T.M. best-article award (2021).
• "The Anti-Feminist Reconstruction of the Midlife Crisis: Popular Psychology, Journalism and Social Science in 1970s USA," Gender & History 30 (2018), no. 1 , 153–176.
• "The Feminist Origins of the Midlife Crisis," Historical Journal 61 (2018), no. 2, 503–523.
• "Midlife-Crisis: Die feministischen Ursprünge eines chauvinistischen Klischees," Nach Feierabend: Zürcher Jahrbuch für Wissensgeschichte 14 (2018), 179–198.
   

Contributed Chapters

• "Pop or Popularization? The Boundaries between Social Science and Journalism." In Observing the Everyday: Journalistic Practices and Knowledge Production in the Modern Era, ed. by Hansjakob Ziemer. New York: Routledge 2022, 249–271.
   

Short Articles

• "Prick Art," cache: Magazin für die Geschichte und Gegenwart der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt 1 (2020), no. III, 26–37.
• co-authored with Anna Mara Schmidt, "Feministische Natur"  [Feminist Nature], cache: Magazin für die Geschichte und Gegenwart der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt 1 (2020), no. II, 1–14.
• "Menocore: Feminist Constructions of Midlife since 1900." In Reinventing, Rethinking and Re-presenting Menopause, ed. by Beverley Carruthers and Jane Woollatt. London: London College of Communication 2019, 10–15.
• "Crisis: Where Human Nature Meets Cultural Critique," Independent Social Research Foundation Bulletin 17 (2018), 34–41.
   

Book Reviews

• “The Prenatal Gaze.” Essay review of The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects, by Sarah S. Richardson, and Weighing the Future: Science, Race, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Age, by Natali Valez, Isis 114/1, 189–192.
• Review of Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and Our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery, by Joseph E. Davis, Ambix 69 (2022), no. 1, 87–89.
• Review of Broken Dreams: An Intimate History of the Midlife Crisis, by Mark Jackson, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 57 (2021), no. 4, 430–432.
• Essay review of Rethinking Therapeutic Culture, edited by Timothy Aubry und Trysh Travis, and Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture, edited by David Kaiser and W. Patrick McKay, Isis 108 (2017), no. 4, 946–948.
• Review of Breaking up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future, edited by Chris Lorenz, and Berber Bevernage, Traverse, no. 3 (2016), 138.
• Review of American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street, by Paula Rabinowitz, H-Soz-u-Kult, December 2016.
• Review of The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood, by Steven Mintz, H-Soz-u-Kult, January 2016.
   

Newspapers, Radio, Blogs

• "Advent heißt Panik", ZEIT Online: 10 nach 8, 7 December 2021.
• "Midlife Crisis: Ein Konzept zwischen Feminismus und Backlash," Genderblog, Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, Humboldt University Berlin, 1 October 2020.
• "Über 40 muss sie nichts mehr müssen," ZEIT Online: 10 nach 8, 13 March 2020.
• "Midlife Crisis - Die Geschichte eines missverstandenen Konzepts," Deutschlandfunk, Essay & Diskurs, 12 August 2018.
• "How Feminists Invented the Male Midlife Crisis," Zocalo Public Square, 1 June 2018.
• "Im Sportwagen durch die Vierziger," Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 27 March 2018.
   

Interviews

• "De tijd lijkt rijp voor de vrouwelijke midlifecrisis—zowel in Hollywoodfictie als in de werkelijkheid" [Time Seems Ripe for Women’s Midlife Crisis—in Hollywood Fiction As Much As in Real Life], Volkskrant, 28 March 2023.
• "This Isn't the Middle Age Millennials Expected," New York Times, 19 March 2023.
• "Midlife Crisis: Feministische Ursprünge eines chauvinistischen Klischees" [Midlife Crisis: Feminist Origins of a Chauvinist Cliché], Wunderwesen Podcast – feministische Fragen in Kunst, Kultur und Wissenschaft, 29 November 2022.
• "Die Krise ist eben nicht immer die Krise der Männer" [Crisis Isn't Always Just for Men], Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, 17 November 2022.
• "Midlife Crisis," BBC Radio 4, 29 April 2020.
• "Midlife Crisis: Mehr als ein Mythos?" [Midlife Crisis: Not just a Myth?] Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bayern 2), 29 January 2020.