Ann Larabee

Ann Larabee

Professor
20th-Century and Contemporary Literature

Office: C626 Wells Hall
Email: larabee@msu.edu

Ann Larabee received her PhD from the Binghamton University, and has taught at Michigan State University since 1988. Her dissertation was on women’s theater and drama in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, and she is known for her pioneering work on the drama of Djuna Barnes and Susan Glaspell.

In more recent years, she has been interested in the relationships among technology, culture, and media. In 2000, she published Decade of Disaster, which examines cultural responses to technological disasters, from the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster to the Bhopal chemical leak.

Prof. Larabee remains interested in the cultural impact and representation of disasters. She is currently at work on a historical study of bomb-making among radical groups, exploring issues of technology transfer, constitutional restraints on speech, and the institutional boundaries placed around dangerous knowledge and instruction. With Prof. Arthur Versluis, Prof Larabee is co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, featuring interdisciplinary scholarly work on global radical movements. Prof. Larabee is considered an expert on the history of terrorism and has contributed to the formation of the historiography of this emerging field. In 2008, as an offshoot of her larger study of radicalism and technology, she published The Dynamite Fiend, a biography of a Confederate agent who attempted to use a time bomb to blow up transatlantic passenger ships. Prof. Larabee also publishes in the field of media studies, and is especially interested in the global mediascape.

Prof. Larabee has overseen dissertations in women and technological invention, cultural studies and radicalism, media and violence, and global media forms. She teaches modern and contemporary literature, drama, literary survey and introductory humanities.