Melissa Monique Littlefield

I work at the intersections of science, technology, and culture, focusing on the ways that scientific and technological solutions are often proposed for invented or imagined “problems.” I particularly enjoy connections between technologies, popular media, and science fiction. For two decades, I worked with the forensic sciences and neurosciences, focusing on technologies such as lie detection, fMRI, and EEG. My first book, The Lying Brain: Lie Detection in Science and Science Fiction (University of Michigan Press, 2011) is a socio-cultural history of mechanical lie detection and its relationship to the emergent, neuroscientific research on the neural correlates of deception. My second book, Instrumental Intimacy: EEG Wearables and Neuroscientific Control concerns the emergence of mobile, user-centered EEG devices and the popular and scientific discourses that fuel their distribution and use. I am also the co-editor (with Jenell Johnson) of The Neuroscientific Turn: Transdisciplinarity in the Age of the Brain (University of Michigan Press, 2012); and co-editor (with Rex Ferguson and James Purdon) of The Art of Identification: Forensics, Surveillance, Identity (Penn State UP, 2021).

Most recently, I've turned my attention to chemistry and textiles with a book project about how wool textiles became a mid-century American problem in need of chemical solutions. Respun: How Wool Survived the Synthetic Revolution, which will be out from JHUP in 2026, draws together my scholarly and personal interests to provide an entertaining look at wool science in the mid-twentieth century. 

I am affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Technology, the Writing Studies Program, and served as the Program Leader for the Neuro Cultures INTERSECT Graduate Training Program (2012-2014). From 2006 to 2019, I was jointly appointed in the Departments of English and Kinesiology and Community Health. Since 2013, I have co-edited (w/ Rajani Sudan) the Society for Literature and Science’s journal, Configurations. My scholarly articles can be found in journals such as Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; Social Studies of Science; Science, Technology & Human Values; Advances in Medical Sociology; Crime, Media Culture; and in several edited collections, including Andrew Shail and Laura Salisbury’s, Neurology and Modernity: A Cultural History of Nervous Systems, 1885-1950.