Henry Wiesenfeld Professor Emerita of the Humanities; PhD, Harvard University
Ruth Leys is a historian of science who specializes in the 20th and 21st-century history of the cognitive-, neuro- and psychological sciences. Published works include Trauma: A Genealogy (2000), From Guilt to Shame: Auschwitz and After (2007); The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique (2017); and Newborn Imitation: The Stakes of an Idea (2020). She has just completed a new book, Fast Thinking: A Critical History of Research on Priming and Automatic Action, under consideration at the University of Chicago Press. These publications and related works reflect her long-standing engagement with problems associated with attempts to naturalize the properties of the mind, including claims regarding the information-processing character of the brain/mind.
Current Interests: The genealogy of the concept of “implicit prejudice”, the challenges involved in designing “affective AI” systems.