Star Trek and History (53 page)

M. G. DuPree
is a freelance writer and classicist who has taught at the Westminster Schools and Pace Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been a devoted linguist ever since she discovered that the more languages you know, the more you can curse without anyone knowing what you are saying; this is a knowledge she applies with some frequency to recalcitrant students. She is fascinated by the alien languages and cultures shown in
Star Trek
, and she is particularly fond of Lursa and B'Etor Duras, those daring Klingon entrepreneurs.

H. Bruce Franklin
is the author or editor of nineteen books on American history and culture, including
Vietnam and Other American Fantasies
and
War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination.
His writings and classes opened the door for science fiction to be taken seriously and taught in American colleges and schools. He persuaded the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum to put on the major exhibit “
Star Trek
and the Sixties”; that 1992 show, for which he was the advisory curator, turned out to be the most popular exhibit in the museum's history. He is currently the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University in Newark.

Brenda Gardenour
, whose rocket engineer father looked suspiciously like a Vulcan, spent much of her childhood under the sway of Creature Double Feature and
Star Trek.
Fascinated by science, medicine, and the horrors of embodiment, it only made sense that she would go on to earn a PhD in the history of medieval medicine from Boston University. Since 2008, she has teleported to Saint Louis College of Pharmacy where, as assistant professor of history, she teaches future pharmacists about life, the universe, and everything. She has published widely in the history of the body, medicine, science, and popular culture—forever torn between her lovingly human McCoy and her ever-logical Spock.

Alice L. George
fell in love with
Star Trek
(and Captain Kirk) as a young journalist working odd hours and taping middle-of-the night TV episodes in the late 1970s. Her favorites then and in the later
Star Trek
incarnations were time-travel tales—perhaps an indicator of her later career as a historian. Time travel always seemed more alluring than space travel—a lesser chance of motion sickness and a greater chance of meeting Teddy Roosevelt or Cleopatra. She was captivated by the thought-provoking idea that a single good deed could have disastrous effects on history. She wondered what might have happened if a time traveler had waylaid Lee Harvey Oswald or if an unexpected sneeze had alerted security guards to the Watergate burglars before they had a chance to break the law. Today, she is an independent historian.

Elizabeth Baird Hardy
is a senior instructor of English at Mayland Community College in western North Carolina. In high school, she annoyed her teachers by pointing out connections to
Star Trek
in history and literature. Now she annoys her students with the same information. There have even been accusations that she makes her selections for student reading based on whether or not a piece was used as an allusion in a
Star Trek
film or episode. She lives on a side of a mountain with her husband, the award-winning historian Michael C. Hardy, and their two children; they are all avid readers, history fans, and stargazers.

Dolly Jørgensen
became intimately familiar with
Star Trek
dialogue and sound effects listening to episodes recorded on cassette tapes during childhood car trips. Coming from a dedicated Trekkie family—her parents were planning to name their second child Losira (
TOS
, “That Which Survives”) if it was a girl and did name their last son Scott after the miracle-working engineer—she jumped at the chance to look at
Star Trek
from an environmental history perspective for this volume. She has a PhD in history and has written on a wide variety of environmental topics, from eleventh-century forestry practices to beaver reintroduction efforts in the twenty-first century.

Alan “Sizzler” Kistler
is an author and actor who regularly transports between New York City and Los Angeles. He is considered a comic book historian by publishers and major news media and has spoken at the Paley Center about the evolution and influence of
Star Trek
on science fiction television shows. He believes that Isaac Asimov should be required reading in schools. His fictional counterpart “Agent Alan Kistler” can be found in the
Star Trek: Destiny
novels.

Michael Lewis
delighted in discovering the original
Star Trek
series in reruns, and he has since been waiting for beaming technology to be used on Earth so that he doesn't have to waste time in airports or driving to work. As a sociologist, he is deeply envious of the
Enterprise
computer's sociological database, as it would be very helpful to his own research on social movements and politics in American history. He is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia.

Lori Maguire
is professor of British and American Studies at the University of Paris 8 (Vincennes–St. Denis), an outpost of the Klingon Empire. She received her doctorate at St. Antony's College, Oxford University (close enough to Stratford to see Patrick Stewart in numerous Royal Shakespeare Company productions before he commanded the
Enterprise
) and her habilitation (advanced doctorate) at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). She has published a large number of articles and books on the political history of Great Britain and the United States, notably on their foreign policy. She has made it her mission to turn her French students into
Star Trek
fans, and she has succeeded in teaching some classes on
Star Trek
.

Brent McDonald
holds a BS in computer science. While it is not an A7 expert computer certification like the one earned by Spock, he is still very skilled. Brent does not fancy himself a futurist, but he looks forward to seeing technology advance further, and he hopes and expects to see many technological breakthroughs in his lifetime. He lives by the saying “The future is wild,” and when it comes to technology, he couldn't be more accurate.

Matthew D. Mingus
is a PhD candidate studying European history at the University of Florida. He has published several articles on the historical developments of modern cartography and is particularly interested in the relationship between German and American strains of geographical thought. In his spare time he volunteers for a Cardassian educational nonprofit, teaching Marxian critical theory to small Ferengi children (no small task!). He lives with his wife, Lindsey, and dog, Dixie—both of whom constantly mock his dream of one day compiling a comprehensive atlas of the Battle of Wolf 359, temporal shifts and all.

John Putman
began watching the original
Star Trek
reruns during the 1970s from his living room “captain's” chair, where he rocked and shook along with the USS
Enterprise
when it was under attack. When he learned in college that biobeds and tricorder scanners would not likely exist for many years, he switched his major from premedicine to history. He is now an associate professor of American history at San Diego State University, where he teaches classes on the American West, California history, and a new class called “
Star Trek
, Culture, and History.” Always appreciating a cup of Earl Grey tea, he and his wife, Irene, have collected more than one hundred
Star Trek
mugs from which to enjoy, like Captain Picard, those quiet moments.

Nancy R. Reagin
watched the original
Star Trek
series broadcasts during the 1960s, and she decided right then that she wanted to be the
Enterprise
's historian; seeing the Guardian of Forever only confirmed her suspicion that Starfleet would be a more interesting place to do historical research. Instead, she ended up becoming the chair of the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Pace University in New York City, where she is also a professor of history. She has written sundry publications on modern German history and European women's history, and she has firm opinions about how the holodeck and other technologies could be used to teach history at Starfleet Academy.

Alexander H. Robles
grew up watching the
Star Trek: The Next Generation
with his
Trek
-obsessed mother, who watched
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
on rapid repeat; he's also an avid fan of the original series and
Deep Space Nine
. He holds a BA in film and screen studies from Pace University, and he is currently pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. He hopes to be the first to establish a canine division in Starfleet and allow dogs to boldly go where no dog has gone before.

Marcus Schulze
is a research director for the Center for Policy Research at the University at Albany and an ABD PhD candidate in the department of political science. His research interests include contemporary political theory, comparative politics, applied ethics, and issues of political violence. He is currently finishing his dissertation research about how soldiers make ethical decisions during wars. Marcus's favorite part of
Star Trek
is the holodeck, which he hopes to use someday in the distant future, when someone finally figures out how to prevent it from malfunctioning.

Amy H. Sturgis
was born a Trekker after listening to reruns of the original
Star Trek
series from the womb. She earned her PhD in intellectual history from Vanderbilt University, and she teaches at Lenoir-Rhyne University and the innovative Mythgard Institute. The recipient of the Imperishable Flame Award for Tolkien/Inklings Scholarship, Sturgis is one of the writers and voices behind StarShipSofa, which in 2010 became the first podcast in history to win a Hugo Award. She shares the official website
amyhsturgis.com
with her evil twin from the mirror universe.

Karma Waltonen
is a geek queen. In 2012 alone, she presented papers on the Whedonverse, graphic novels, and
The Simpsons
(she is the coauthor of
The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield
). She is currently working on a
Doctor Who
article and planning a costume for her next presentation at Comic-Con. When not watching
Star Trek
or teaching at the University of California, Davis, she's working as the editor of
Margaret Atwood Studies.

Margaret A. Weitekamp
harbored a quiet love for
Star Trek
for years, even as she pursued studies in history and women's studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University. Little did she know that all of that television and movie watching would become a job skill when she applied to become the curator of the Social and Cultural Dimensions of Spaceflight collection at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. In that position, she now counts among the four-thousand-plus artifacts in her care the eleven-foot studio model of the
Star Trek
starship
Enterprise
used in the filming of the original television series and five original Tribbles that have not, despite all of her good work, multiplied. She lives outside of Washington, D.C., with her husband, Kevin (whose first gift to her was a small Lt. Worf figurine purchased at a
Star Trek
convention in Los Angeles), and their three children.

Rick Worland
received his MA and PhD in motion picture/television critical studies from UCLA. His teaching has included courses on film history, documentaries, and silent cinema, as well as popular genres including westerns, horror/science fiction, film noir, European cinema, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. His research has focused primarily on popular film and television in the Cold War period. Dr. Worland has published in various academic journals, including
Cinema Journal, Journal of Film and Video, Journal of Popular Film and Television
, and
Film and History.
His first book,
The Horror Film: An Introduction
, appeared in 2007 from Blackwell Publishing.

Index: Databanks

Abrams, J. J.

Abrom

Adare, Sierra S.

Advanced Research Projects Agency (Department of Defense)

Ahab, Captain

Alexander, son of Worf

American Indian Movement (AIM)

Anderson, Gerry

Anderson, Sylvia

Andorians

Ansatans

Anthwara

Arbiter of Succession

Archer, Captain Jonathan

Armen, Margaret

Asimov, Isaac

Ayelborne

Bajorans

Ba'ku

Barclay, Lt. Reginald

Baris, Nilz

Baroner (Kirk)

Barrett, Duncan

Barrett, Majel

Barrett, Michèle

Bartle, Richard

Bashir, Julian

Bates, Russell

Battle of Bouvines

Battlestar Galactica
(television show)

Bell, Joseph

Beltran, Robert

Ben Casey
(television show)

Bendii syndrome

Berman, Rick

Bernardi, Daniel

B'Etor

Biophilia
(Wilson)

Bird-of-Prey

Bloom, Harold

Borg

Bradbury, Ray

Brahms, Dr.

Braxton

Bumppo, Natty

Bush, George H. W.

Butterfly Effect

Capella IV

Capitularies

Captain's Log Supplemental
(Beltran)