Myrna Perez

About Dr. Perez

Myrna Perez is Associate Professor at Ohio University, jointly appointed in Classics & Religious Studies and in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of the History of Science from Harvard University. She was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rice University and has been a fellow at the Harvard Divinity School and in the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University. She is the co-editor of Critical Approaches to Science and Religion (Columbia University Press, 2023) and author of Criticizing Science: Stephen Jay Gould and the Struggle for American Democracy, forthcoming Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024. Her audio lecture series “The History of Science, Sexuality and Medicine” is available via Audible and Apple Books. She was a featured contributor of the 2023 AAAS documentary “Science as Mastery: A Story of Race and Power.” She has published widely across the history of science, religious studies, and critical race, feminist and queer studies including in Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, American Quarterly, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Immanent Frame, Religious Studies Review and British Journal for the History of Science. Her work has been supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company Philadelphia, the Huntington Library, and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History

Education

Ph.D., Harvard University, Department of the History of Science, 2014

B.S., Westmont College, Department of Biology; Department of History, 2006

Research Interests

• Science and Religion
• Feminist Science Studies
• Sexuality Studies
• Critical Race Studies
• History of Science
• 19th and 20th Century U.S. History
• History of Christianity

Courses Taught

• CARS 2510 Difficult Dialogues: Religion, Gender, and Sexuality
• CARS 2530 Difficult Dialogues: Science and Religion
• CARS 3230 American Religion and Politics
• CARS 3290 Women and Religion