Dr. Travis A. Weisse is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Sociology and in Public Health at New Mexico State University. He received his PhD in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2020. His primary research interests include the social and cultural dimensions of food, medicine, and scientific expertise, specifically populist resistance to industrial agriculture and orthodox medicine. Weisse’s first book Health Freaks: America’s Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness examines the social mechanics powering the erosion of trust in conventional nutrition advice and the growing public faith in fringe treatments for chronic disease. His next major research project will examine the culture of wellness in and around Silicon Valley, tracing its influence on the architects and architecture of the web and the ensuing propagation of heterodox health beliefs online.
When I started at UW, I had just completed an MA in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University where I had been focusing on environmental history and the history of biology, but when I was accepted to Madison’s program, I was pretty sure I wanted to shift my focus to the history of nutrition science–including the discovery of vitamins and minerals, the eradication of nutrition deficiency syndromes, hospital dietetics, etc. My eventual research focus wasn’t too far away, but did represent an important departure of emphasis as I ended up pursuing the social and cultural history of fad diets and alternative medicine (which is basically the foil of orthodox nutrition science). Nutrition scientists actually became the primary antagonists of my dissertation-turned-first-book.
My favorite UW memory has to be meeting my future wife in Intro to Science and Technology Studies with Dr. Joan Fujimura. After a long semester of unsubtle flirting, we partnered up to lead a class discussion–the final session for the semester–so it was celebratory and obviously class was held at the Rathskeller in the Student Union. It being Wisconsin, everyone had a beer or two and our discussion activity required that everyone get into groups to invent, draw, and then present a futuristic medical technology that would solve some major global issue. The non-presenters were then challenged with imagining all the potential social and cultural drawbacks and unintended consequences of these technologies were they to be developed. The class was unexpectedly raucous, we all bonded as a group, and my then-girlfriend and I were appropriately teased as it was unceremoniously revealed that we were in fact dating.