Guy Ortolano

Title:	Assistant Professor of History
Degree:	PHD, Northwestern University
Dept:	History
Office:	Busch Hall
Mailbox:	Campus Box 1062 One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 Hide Full Mailing Address
Phone:	(314) 935-5450
E-mail:	ortolano@wustl.edu

Guy Ortolano is a cultural and intellectual historian of modern Britain, with interests in the history of the humanities and the history of science. He teaches an annual survey of British history from 1688 to the present, in addition to a series of more specialized seminars, and he advises theses in all areas of modern British history.

Courses
Britain and its Empire from 1688-1870; Britain and its Empire since 1870; Britain in the 1960s; Science, Religion and the Humanities Since Darwin; Science and Empire; Literature of History (Introduction to Graduate Study)

Research Interests
Modern Britain; History of Science; Cultural, Political, and Intellectual History. Professor Ortolano is currently completing a book about the "two cultures" controversy, which was a sensational public quarrel between advocates of the sciences and the humanities at the dawn of the 1960s. Instead of explaining that episode in terms of an age-old rivalry between competing ways of knowing, he argues that the passions it inspired are best understood in the context of British society and politics between the breakup of the empire and the end of "The Sixties." His next major project examines fascination with - and suspicion of - novelty in modern British culture, focusing especially upon the establishment of "New Towns" after the Second World War.

Selected Publications
The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

"'Decline' as a Weapon in Cultural Politics," in Even More Adventures with Britannia, ed. William Roger Louis (forthcoming).

"F. R. Leavis, Science, and the Abiding Crisis of Modern Civilization,” History of Science (2005): 161-185.

"Human Science or a Human Face? Social History and the 'Two Cultures' Controversy,” Journal of British Studies (October 2004): 482-505.

"Two Cultures, One University: The Institutional Origins of the 'Two Cultures' Controversy,” Albion (Winter 2002): 606-624.

"The Role of Dorcas in 'Roger Malvin's Burial',” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review (Fall 1999): 8-16.