Good things come in twos and threes to Rebecca Herzig, associate professor of women and gender studies.

During winter 2004-05, Herzig received two honors recognizing excellence in teaching: the Kroepsch Award and a Phillips Fellowship. (Will Ambrose, associate professor of biology, also received the Kroepsch, and Phillips awards went to biologist Pamela Baker '70 and geologist J. Dykstra Eusden '80).

Meanwhile, Herzig is completing two books and starting a third. Suffering for Science: Will, Reason, and Sacrifice in Late Nineteenth-Century America is set for fall 2005 publication by Rutgers University Press. She is one of three co-editors of The Nature of Difference: Readings in the History of Science, Race, and Sex, scheduled to appear from the MIT Press in autumn 2006.

Then there's the third book, to which Herzig will devote the yearlong leave funded by the Phillips. This will explore how people use the alteration of bodily features -- in particular, the removal of body hair -- as signals of identity, whether sexual, racial, religious, etc.

"At first glance, hair removal is a strange topic for a historian of science," allows Herzig, who investigates the intersections of science, technology and social history. But, she explains, changes in such mundane practices don't happen in isolation: They reflect the ways people view or express difference, ways often shaped by scientific thought. "So this odd little subject turns out to get at some of the central intellectual debates of the past few centuries," she says.