Andrew Fiss

Contact

afiss@mtu.edu
906-487-2574
Walker 345

Associate Professor of Technical & Professional Communication

Ph.D. History & Philosophy of Science, Indiana University
A.B. Mathematics, Vassar College

Biography

My graduate degrees in history and philosophy of science and postdoctoral fellowships in science, technology, and society (STS) and writing studies have positioned me to work at the intersections of STS and STC. My research articles have appeared in the journals Science & Education, the History of Education Quarterly, New York History, Peitho, Configurations, and Technical Communication Quarterly. My new book, Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom (Rutgers, 2021), argues that we must understand mathematics as communication-based, particularly in order to deal with Americans’ widespread math hatred and high rates of math anxiety. With evidence from a dozen educational archives, it recovers the performative dimensions of communicating about mathematics, during the emergence of many assumptions, techniques, and frameworks of American higher education. Performing Math brings together Civil War Era instructions for reading mathematics textbooks, manuals for speaking at the blackboard, and debates about written testing, with informal student performances (funerals for mathematics textbooks) and student-generated mathematical plays.

My participation in multiple grants advances transdisciplinary education, community engagement, and educational innovation. As named personnel in the 2019 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant “Human-Centered Engineering,” I interviewed engineers and humanists about the values of each others’ fields, exploring the possibilities of building “engineering humanities” on the model of medical humanities. On the 2020-2022 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant “Michigan Community and Anishinaabe Renewable Energy Sovereignty (MICARES),” I extended these interests to explicit models of team science and collaboration.

At the undergraduate level, I especially teach courses that contribute to the Program in Scientific and Technical Communication. STC at Michigan Tech is a leader in the field, significantly arguing for the importance of humanities-based STC for over 40 years. At the graduate level, I participate in the MS/PhD program in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture: teaching Public Understandings of Science; Technical & Scientific Communication; and the Practicum in Teaching Technical Communication, and serving as research advisor and graduate program director.

Links of Interest

Google Scholar Profile

Specialties

Technical Communication
STS (Science and Technology Studies; Science, Technology, and Society)
Science Communication
History and Philosophy of Science and Math
Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary Education

Recent Publications

Fiss, A. Ridicule, Technical Communication, and Nineteenth-Century Women Performing College Math. Technical Communication Quarterly 30 (2021): 143-156.
Schelly, C., V. Gagnon, K. Arola, A. Fiss, M. Schaefer, and K.E. Halvorsen. “Cultural imaginaries or incommensurable ontologies? Relationality and sovereignty as worldviews in socio-technological system transitions.” Energy Research & Social Science 80 (October 2021): 102242.
Schelly, C., D. Bessette, K. Brosemer, V. Gagnon, K.L. Arola, A. Fiss, J.M. Pearce, and K.E. Halvorsen. Energy Policy for Energy Sovereignty: Can Policy Tools Enhance Energy Sovereignty? Solar Energy 205 (15 July 2020): 109-112.
Fiss, A. Mathmagics of Media Princesses: Informal STEM Learning, STEM Rhetorics, and Animated Children's Movies. Peitho 22.1 (Fall/Winter 2019): 128-142.
Fiss, A. and L.K. Fiss. Laughing Out of Math Class: The Vassar Mathematikado and Nineteenth-Century Women's Education. Configurations 27.3 (Summer 2019): 301-329.
Fiss, A. Structures of Antifeminism: Drugs and Women’s Education in the Texts of Dr. Clarke. Peitho 21.1 (Fall/Winter 2018): 81-103.
Fiss, A. 2017. Studying Objects, Objectifying Students: Natural History at Women's Colleges in Postbellum New York State. New York History 98.2 (Spring 2017): 205-229.
Fiss, A. 2017. Mathematics and Mourning: Textbook Burial and Student Culture Before and After the Civil War, 1853-1880. History of Education Quarterly 57.2 (May 2017): 221-246.
Fiss, A. and M. Vest. August 2014. Broadcasting Science Writing: Media Translations in Liberal Arts Pedagogy. Transformations, Special Issue on Digital Collaboration and Blended/Hybrid Learning.
Fiss, A. January 2014. Cultivating Parabolas in the Parlor Garden: Reconciling Mathematics Education and Feminine Ideals in Nineteenth-Century America. Science & Education, Special Issue on the History and Philosophy of Mathematics Education. 23: 241-250.
Fiss, A. August 2012. Problems of Abstraction: Defining an American Standard for Mathematics Education at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Science & Education. 21: 1185-1197.
Chaney, J., A. Fiss, P. Carey, and F. Iacobelli. March 2014. Graduate School and Family. In GPS for Graduate School: Students Share Their Stories. Purdue: Purdue University Press.

Book

Fiss, Andrew. Performing Math: A History of Communication and Anxiety in the American Mathematics Classroom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021.

Recent Presentations

“Writing Welcome: Recruitment as intentional invitation to inclusive spaces in graduate education,” with Jen Almjeld, Karen Kuralt, Kailyn Shartel Hall, Eric Leake, and Matthew Moberly. Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, March 2022.
“The Paper for Practical Men: Transnational Constructions of Engineering Identities through Periodicals,” with Laura Kasson Fiss. History of Science Society Annual Meeting, New Orleans and Online, November 2021.
“Invitation Stories: Program profiles as recruitment tool,” with Jennifer Almjeld, Karen Kuralt, Kailyn Shartel Hall, Eric Leake, and Matthew Moberly. CPTSC (Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication) Annual Conference, Virtual, October 2021.
“‘Pioneer of the Technical and Trade Press of the World’: Mining Periodicals in the Holdings of Michigan Technological University,” with Laura Kasson Fiss and Michelle Jarvie-Eggart. Conference of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, Virtual, September 2021.
“Toward a History of Math Anxiety: From Oral Examination to Written Testing in American Redefinitions of Student Performance.” International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Virtual, July 2021.
“Convergence Evaluation for Convergence Research: Reflection, Transdisciplinarity, and Team Science.” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Virtual, April 2021.
"Sounds of Sound Health: Historical Traditions of Student Singing about Health and Science," Conference on College Composition and Communication (Virtual) 2020.
"Professional Symbols: Parody and the Broader Reach of Local Mathematics." For the British Academy Workshop "Universals' Locales: The International and Global History and Sociology of Modern Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences," the University of Edinburgh, January 2020.
“Turning Health Fears into a Joke: Vassar Students’ Covert Rhetorics of Ridicule, 1860s-1880s,” International Society for the History of Rhetoric, New Orleans, July 2019.
“Religious Mourning and Mathematical Achievement: Burying Anna Lytics at 1870s Bowdoin College (and Bates College),” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Kansas City, March 2018.
Andrew Fiss and Laura Kasson Fiss, "Female 'Mathematikados': Parodying the Patriarchy in 19th-century STEMM Education." Lecture for the British Science Festival, British Association for the Advancement of Science, September 2017.
“‘For Computing Is Our Duty’: How Women Became Computers.” Lecture for the Algorithmic Thinking Symposium, UC Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society, Social Science Matrix, Institute of International Studies, May 2017.