Karen Flood is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Harvard Summer School. She was the previously the  Allston Burr Dudley House Dean from 2008-2015 and was the Acting Director of Studies in WGS from 2006 to 2008. Before joining WGS, she taught in the History and Literature concentration, where she was the Assistant Director of Studies.

Karen received her Ph.D. from Harvard’s History of American Civilization program. She specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century cultural history, with particular interests in gender and sexuality, the body, the history of medicine and science, death rituals and memorialization, and visual culture. Her revised dissertation is entitledContemplating Corpses: The Treatment of the Dead and Conceptions of the Body in Modern American Culture.

Her teaching interests include body modification and beauty regimens; weight and body image; reproductive technologies and reproductive politics; the history of sexuality; gender and work; and race and ethnicity in American history.