David Singerman
Assistant Professor of History and American Studies
Office Hours: T 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM
Field & Specialties
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
History of Capitalism
Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Environmental History
Education
- PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014
- MPhil, University of Cambridge, 2007
- BA, Columbia University, 2006
Biography
David Singerman is a historian of science, technology, medicine, and capitalism. His first book, Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar will be published in September 2025 by the University of Chicago Press. His second book project is a new history of drugs and performance in sports.
His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Chemical Heritage Foundation, among others. In 2015 his dissertation was awarded prizes for best dissertation in business history by the Business History Conference and the Association of Business Historians (UK). Before coming to UVA he was a postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University and a research associate at Harvard Business School.
Photo by Chris Taylor / U.S. Department of the Treasury
Publications
Journal articles and book chapters
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“Who’s Afraid of the Dark Sugar?,” in Acquired Tastes: Stories About the Origins of Modern Food, ed. Benjamin Cohen, Anna Zeide, and Michael Kideckel (MIT Press, 2021), https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542913/acquired-tastes/
- (with Aaron Stupple and Leo Anthony Celi), "The Reproducibility Crisis in the Age of Digital Medicine," npj Digital Medicine 2, no. 1 (January 29, 2019): 2, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-019-0079-z
- "Sugar Machines and the Fragile Infrastructure of Commodities in the Nineteenth Century," Osiris vol. 33 (2018), special issue on "Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories," https://doi.org/10.1086/699234
- “The Limits of Chemical Control in the Caribbean Sugar Factory,” Radical History Review 127 (January 2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/01636545-3690858
- “Science, Commodities, and Corruption in the Gilded Age”, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (July 2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1537781416000128
- “Keynesian Eugenics and the Goodness of the World”, Journal of British Studies (July 2016), https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/abs/keynesian-eugenics-and-the-goodness-of-the-world/1D1FE14255DA18E1DA28ED94E9680198
- “Inventing Purity in the Atlantic Sugar World, 1860-1930”, Enterprise and Society (December 2015), hhttps://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/enterprise-and-society/article/abs/inventing-purity-in-the-atlantic-sugar-world-18601930/183DF15D0982BAD7047DBFAF163BF1D2
- “‘A Doubt is At Best an Unsafe Standard’: Measuring Sugar in the Early Bureau of Standards,” NIST Journal of Research 112, no. 1 (January 2007), http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/jres.112.004
Newspapers
- “The Shady History of Big Sugar,” op-ed in The New York Times, 17 September 2016.
Interviews
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“Public Thinker: Lara Putnam Wants You to Knock on Your Neighbor’s Door,” Public Books, July 2022.
Online essays
- "There’s Something Fishy About U.S.-Canada Trade Wars," The Atlantic online, 14 June 2018.
Pieces for Bunkhistory.org
- The Sugar Tramp, 10 January 2018.
- The Other End of the Telescope, 24 November 2017.
- When Science was Big, 19 October 2017.
- Full list here
Courses Taught
From fall 2024 through spring 2026, Prof. Singerman will be teaching Engagements courses in the College Fellows program.
Current courses
- HIST 3501 Workshop: Sugar and Global History
- AMST 3001 Theories and Methods of American Studies
- HIUS 2101 Technologies of American Life
Previous courses
- HIST 1501 The Global Financial Crisis of 2008
- HIST 1501 Corruption and Fraud
- AMST 3559 Science and Democracy in America