Dave Walsh

teaching faculty for the American Cultural Studies Program in Arts & Sciences

Dave Walsh is teaching faculty for the American Cultural Studies Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. He runs the Harvey Scholar senior year mentorship program, and is also faculty lead for the program’s community connection initiative, STL in AMCS. Dave specializes in technological history and material culture study, and he offers a variety of courses that examine the cultures of industry and innovation in the American tradition. His research area focuses on how the emergence of novel technologies surface latent anxieties and optimisms about what tech means, what it does, and what it does against us. These occasions help frame a broad technological imagination thick with history and cultural context that informs social, cultural, political, and economic systems within which debates about human value are fought. His primary research is the field of computers and computational engineering during the early period of the cold war. He also studies and teaches the infrastructural design and innovation histories of the internet, encryption, and so-called ‘hacker’ culture. Dave blends study of tech culture with St. Louis regional history in a number of courses, including the industrial history of St. Louis, automobiling and transportation, and the 1904 World’s Fair. He also offers courses on the pop culture expressions of tech and social futurism, the technological politics of propaganda, and surveillance paradigms.

Dave also advocates for digital privacy rights and participates in national conversations about the role of the humanities in cyber security careers. To that end he devotes time to train people how they can operate safely and securely in their everyday digital habits and, importantly, how they can teach others. He and his family are members of Memorial Presbyterian Church.

Contact Dave here.