Overview
Hannah Leblanc is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society for the Humanities and the Department of Science & Technology Studies. She received her PhD in History from Stanford University, with a concentration in History of Science and a PhD minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her current book project, Nutrition for National Defense, examines US government-sponsored nutrition science projects in World War II and the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research, it tells the story of how home economists, doctors, food technologists, military strategists, and corporate researchers linked the emerging science of nutrition to the needs of a country at war. The research and technologies produced by these experts seeped into an immense array of government and industrial projects, touching everything from Cheetos, to the federal poverty line, to international development programs. Her second project examines the invention of disposable food packaging and the waste infrastructure needed to make it viable.
Research Focus
Nutrition for National Defense: US Food Science in World War II and the Cold War