Alison Winter
{{Short description|American academic}}
Alison Winter (19 November 1965 – 22 June 2016) was an American academic.
Biography
Born on 19 November 1965 in New Haven, Connecticut,{{cite news |last1=Reisz |first1=Matthew |title=Alison Winter, 1965-2016 |url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/people/obituary-alison-winter-1965-2016 |accessdate=8 February 2019 |work=Times Higher Education |date=25 August 2016 |url-access=registration}} Winter spent her early childhood in Bonn, Germany, and attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father taught mathematics at the University of Michigan.{{cite news |author1=Graydon Megan |title=Alison Winter, University of Chicago historian, dies at 50 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/ct-alison-winter-obituary-20160630-story.html |accessdate=8 February 2019 |work=Chicago Tribune |date=30 June 2016}} His influence led her to study the history of science at the University of Chicago beginning in 1983.{{cite news |last1=Peters |first1=Mark |title=Alison Winter, historian of science, 1965-2016 |url=https://news.uchicago.edu/story/alison-winter-historian-science-1965-2016 |accessdate=8 February 2019 |publisher=University of Chicago |date=24 June 2016}} Winter moved to the United Kingdom for graduate study, where she met Adrian Johns in 1987. The two married in 1992.{{cite news |title=Remembering Alison Winter |url=https://history.uchicago.edu/news/remembering-alison-winter |accessdate=8 February 2019 |publisher=University of Chicago |date=16 November 2016 |archive-date=9 February 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190209124257/https://history.uchicago.edu/news/remembering-alison-winter |url-status=dead }} Winter completed her M. Phil at the University of Cambridge in 1991, followed by a PhD in 1993.{{cite news |title=Alison Winter AB'87, historian of the mind, 1965–2016 |url=https://history.uchicago.edu/news/alison-winter-ab%E2%80%9987-historian-mind-1965%E2%80%932016 |publisher=University of Chicago |date=June 23, 2016 |access-date=February 8, 2019 |archive-date=February 9, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190209124308/https://history.uchicago.edu/news/alison-winter-ab%E2%80%9987-historian-mind-1965%E2%80%932016 |url-status=dead }} She began teaching at the California Institute of Technology in 1994, and returned to Chicago as a faculty member in 2001.{{cite news |last1=Richards |first1=Robert J. |authorlink1=Robert J. Richards |title=In Memoriam: Alison Winter |url=https://hssonline.org/resources/publications/newsletter/january-2017-newsletter/in-memoriam-alison-winter/ |accessdate=8 February 2019 |publisher=History of Science Society |date=January 2017}}
Winter's doctoral dissertation was published by the University of Chicago Press as the book Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain in 1998. The work covered the early history of animal magnetism and Franz Mesmer,{{cite journal |last1=Gravitz |first1=Melvin A. |title=Winter, Alison (1998). Mesmerized: Powers of mind in Victorian Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, xiv + 464 Pages, $30.00 (Cloth) |journal=American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis |date=2000 |volume=43 |issue=1 |pages=77–78 |doi=10.1080/00029157.2000.10404257|s2cid=143918056 }} as well as its spread throughout England from the 1830s to the 1870s,{{cite journal|last1=Pols |first1=Hans |title=Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (review) |journal=Bulletin of the History of Medicine |date=1999 |volume=73 |issue=4 |pages=711–712 |doi=10.1353/bhm.1999.0187 |s2cid=72447023 |via=Project Muse |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/4389|url-access=subscription }} and focused on the work of John Elliotson.{{cite journal |last1=Hunt |first1=Bruce J. |title=Alison Winter. Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1998. Pp. xiv, 464. $30.00 |journal=The American Historical Review |date=1 October 2000 |volume=105 |issue=4 |pages=1388–1389 |doi=10.1086/ahr/105.4.1388}} Research for Winter's second book Memory: Fragments of a Modern History was funded by the Guggenheim Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and National Science Foundation. Memory was written in eleven chapters that can be read separately,{{cite journal |last1=Danziger |first1=Kurt |title=Book review: Memory: Fragments of a Modern History |journal=Memory Studies |date=September 2013 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=497–499 |doi=10.1177/1750698013492681d|s2cid=164083162 }} as each chapter covers a different topic and several examples relating to memory.{{cite news |last1=Collins |first1=Alan |title=Memory: Fragments of a Modern History |url=https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/memory-fragments-of-a-modern-history/418627.article |accessdate=8 February 2019 |work=Times Higher Education |date=12 January 2012 |url-access=registration}}{{cite news |title=Memory: Fragments of a Modern History |url=https://www.sciencenews.org/article/memory-fragments-modern-history-alison-winter |accessdate=8 February 2019 |work=Science News |date=27 January 2012|url-access=registration}} Alluding to its title,{{cite journal |last1=Ballenger |first1=Jesse F. |title=Memory: Fragments of a Modern History (review) |journal=Bulletin of the History of Medicine |date=2012 |volume=86 |issue=2 |pages=291–292 |doi=10.1353/bhm.2012.0040 |s2cid=57333253 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/485815|url-access=subscription }}{{cite journal |last1=Balmer |first1=Andrew S. |title=Alison Winter, Memory: Fragments of a Modern History. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. x+319. ISBN 978-0-226-90258-6. £21.00 (hardback). |journal=The British Journal for the History of Science |date=December 2014 |volume=47 |issue=4 |pages=750–751 |doi=10.1017/S000708741400082X}} Memory sought to help readers "understand the broad historical developments precisely by bringing fragments of memory's history to life."{{cite journal |last1=Howe |first1=Edmund G. |title=Memory: Fragments of a Modern History, by Alison Winter |journal=Psychiatry |date=2016 |volume=79 |issue=2 |pages=184–189 |doi=10.1080/00332747.2016.1179515|s2cid=41262483 }} Following its publication by the University of Chicago Press in 2012, Winter received the Gordon J. Laing Award in 2014.{{cite news |last1=Ingmire |first1=Jann |title=2014 UChicago Press Laing Prize awarded to Alison Winter |url=https://news.uchicago.edu/story/2014-uchicago-press-laing-prize-awarded-alison-winter |accessdate=8 February 2019 |publisher=University of Chicago |date=25 April 2014}}
Winter was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2015, and died of a brain tumor on 22 June 2016, aged 50.
References
{{reflist}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Winter, Alison}}
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:21st-century American women writers
Category:Writers from New Haven, Connecticut
Category:University of Chicago alumni
Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford
Category:California Institute of Technology faculty
Category:University of Chicago faculty
Category:American women historians
Category:20th-century American historians
Category:21st-century American historians
Category:Deaths from brain cancer in Illinois
Category:Historians of psychology
Category:American historians of science