Erika Lorraine Milam specializes in the history of the modern life sciences, particularly evolutionary theory and ecology. Her research has explored how scientists have used animals as models for understanding human behavior, from sex to aggression. She is author of Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (Princeton University Press, 2019) and Looking for a Few Good Males: Female Choice in Evolutionary Biology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). With Robert A. Nye, she co-edited Scientific Masculinities (Osiris, Vol. 30, 2015). Professor Milam was interviewed about her research and teaching in the spring of 2018.

She graduated with a biology major from Carleton College and subsequently earned an M.S. in Biology (Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology) from the University of Michigan, where she developed an interest in the history of evolutionary theory. She then completed her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in the History of Science. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin, Germany, she taught at the University of Maryland for several years before joining the Princeton History Department.

Her current project explores the efflorescence of long-term field sites to study animal behavior after the Second World War and the growth of behavioral ecology as a discipline.

Current Research

Timescapes of Behavior

This developing project explores the growth of behavioral ecology as a discipline and the efflorescence of long-term research sites after the Second World War. The working title evokes the intertwined relevance of temporality and spatiality in charting the history of multi-generational studies of animal behavior in the field.

Women in Science Oral History Pilot Project

Co-organized with Alain St. Pierre. During the 2018-19 academic year, we interviewed several female scientists at Princeton about their careers, asking (for example): When and why they became interested in the questions that would later drive their research? How did they came to work at Princeton? What formal and informal networks of colleagues have sustained them in their careers? What do they value most about their research? After transcription and approval, these oral histories will be placed in Princeton University Archives where they will be available to future researchers. We are grateful to the Princeton Histories Fund for supporting this pilot project and plan to renew our efforts as the public health situation evolves.

Published Projects

Creatures of Cain

Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (Princeton University Press, 2019) addresses how and why zoological and primatological research on animal behavior came to compete with anthropological studies of human cultures as a source of reliable information about human nature in the 1960s and '70s. Constructed as a series of chronologically parallel stories, this project explores the gendered landscape in which conversations about human nature took place. Creatures of Cain was awarded the 2020 Suzanne J. Levinson Prize by the History of Science Society and was shortlisted for the 2020 Pickstone Prize by the British Society for the History of Science. 

Descent of Darwin

Descent of Darwin: Race, Sex, and Human Nature is co-edited with Suman Seth and published as Volume 6 (2021) of BJHS Themes, an open-access thematic serial published annually under the auspices of the British Journal for the History of Science. Inspired by the upcoming 150th anniversary of the 1871 publication of Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, the edited collection emerged from a workshop in February 2018 revisiting the development and legacy of Charles Darwin's ideas about human evolution. 

Scientific Masculinities

Co-edited with Robert Nye. Given the ubiquitous presence of men as scientists, engineers, and physicians throughout history, this volume asks what are the consequences of changing the kinds of questions we ask about the scientific enterprise from, for example, “why did scientists think X?” to “why did male scientists think X”? Or, more exactly, what does it add to our understanding of science if we factor in the masculine social and cultural perspectives of time and place? The tools for understanding complex gender dynamics and the importance of gender in the everyday lived experiences of scientists and engineers have been amply demonstrated by the substantial literature on women in science and on gender studies of science. Our challenge was to bring to light the ways that scientific masculinities have operated over time, and within different cultures, without re-enacting history by excluding women or femininity from the story. Published as Osiris, Vol. 30 (2015).

Looking for a Few Good Males 

Looking for a Few Good Males: Female Choice in Evolutionary Biology (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), explores the theory of sexual selection and the connections between biological investigations of reproductive and courtship behavior in animals and humans, from Charles Darwin in the mid-19th century to sociobiology in the 1970s. Looking for a Few Good Males has been translated into Slovak as Zopár Správnych Chlapov: Ženský výber v evolučnej biológii (Bratislava: Hadart Publishing, 2019).

Public-Facing Scholarship

Histories of the Future

Co-organized with Frederick Gibbs and Joanna Radin. How do we make the future? Historians of science, technology, and medicine are especially well-situated to explore how futures are made in a world of scientific and technological innovation. The project began with a workshop in February 2015, where participants considered the ways that science fiction and speculative nonfiction overlap to provide readers of both with visions of the future that are often surprising in their sympathetic coherence. Each author also contributed to the project's open-access, open-code website: www.histscifi.com.

Teaching

Professor Milam teaches courses in the history of science, including the history of environmentalism and ecology, gender and science, and science fiction. You can peruse recent syllabi on her website.