Histories of race and science; history of citizenship; 19th century US social history; histories of capitalism; history of corporations
Dr. Michael Ortiz-Castro (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of History at Bentley University. An interdisciplinary historian by training, Dr. Ortiz-Castro’s research focuses on the history of race, rights, and different in the United States. He is currently at work on his first book manuscript, presently titled Acts of Citizenship: Belonging and Biology in Post-Reconstruction America, which argues for an understanding of post-Reconstruction citizenship as constructed through discourses of race and biology, many of which played a major role in the formation of American national culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is tentatively sketching out a second book project titled A Stakeholder Republic: Citizens, Corporations and their Discontents, which explores the relationship between corporations and state function in the 20th century; this project is deeply interested in the impact of privatization of state functions on civil rights and demands for equality made by everyday citizens. Dr. Ortiz-Castro’s writing is publicly available at Social History of Medicine and under review at Journal of American History. His work has been funded by the History of Science Society, the Harvard Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Yale Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, the American Philosophical Society, the Bentley Faculty Affairs Committee, and the Bentley Research Council. At Bentley, Dr. Ortiz-Castro teaches broadly in American history, with an emphasis on courses covering the history of race in the US, and courses broadly in the histories of science and medicine.