Working Groups
The Consortium invites scholars to join our topical working groups for challenging and collegial discussion of interesting publications in their fields and of each others’ works-in-progress.
Each group meets monthly. All interested scholars are welcome to participate via online video conferencing.
To join a group:
- Log in, or create an account
- Click on a group below
- Click on the "Membership" tab and select "Request Group Membership"
Submit a discussion paper for one of the working groups.
Upcoming Meetings
Please set your timezone.
Framing Discussion and Introductions
For our first meeting, we will read two short published papers to frame this year's emphasis on the relationship between linguistics and information science: Frederick Jelinek's retrospective, "Some of my Best Friends Are Linguists," and Fernando Pereira's essay, "Formal Grammar and Information Theory: Together Again?" We plan, also, to set aside time for (re-)introductions to begin the year.
We will discuss
Georges Roque: « Éléments de méthode d’analyse de la signification des couleurs : expression et contenu » / “Expression and content: A methodological tool to analyze color meaning”
Abstract:
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Guillermo Pupo Pernet (University of Arkansas): Achiote: Painting the Town Red
Double Book Launch and Celebration
Claire Burridge (University of Oslo) and Melissa Reynolds (Texas Christian University) will join us for an informal discussion of their new books "Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c. 775-900" (Brill) and "Reading Practice. The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print" (Chicago).
Surgical Instruments of Indian “oculists”
Meet and greet
This will be an informal meeting. The conveners will explain how this group came together and what their goals are. This will also be a time for the participants to introduce themselves and explain what they would like to get out of these meetings.
Looking Over the Over Looked - Lesser-known Colour Photography Processes with Janine Freeston
Lynn Nyhart, University of Wisconsin-Madison, "Popular (German) Natural History Meets the Ottoman Empire: Situating Ernst Haeckel's Arabian Corals (1875)."
In this session, we will read and discuss Jülide Etem's working paper, “Physics Film Experiments in the United States and Turkey, 1956–1978.”
To kick off our first working group meeting of the 2024/2025 year, we will explore the implications of ectogenesis—reproduction outside the body.
In advance of the discussion, we encourage participants take a look at the following three pieces--each of which grapples with history and politics of artificial womb technology:
SHOT REDUX!
Join us for the popular review of the annual SHOT meeting, MC'd by our own Ben Gross. SHOt (Society for the History of Technology) held its annual meeting this past July in Vina del Mar, Chile; usually it meets during the fall. Come prepared to tell us what you found interesting, controversial, problematic, eye-opening.
If you were not able to attend the meeting, this is a great way to learn what went on and to get some of the vibe.
Hoping to see you soon!
Victoria Dickenson and Anna Winterbottom (McGill), "Hidden hands in colonial natural histories: lessons from four case studies at McGill"
Questing Excellence in Academia
A discussion with Knut H. Sørensen and Sharon Traweek about their recently published open-access book, Questing Excellence in Academia: A Tale of Two Universities (London: Routledge, 2022).
*NOTE SPECIAL DATE AND TIME*
Optional reading will be announced shortly!
Kirke Elsass, "Getting Comfortable in the Basement: Children’s Health, Women’s Work, and Respectability in the Domestic Subterranean, 1850-1930"
Jesse Smith (Science History Institute)
Giora Hon and Bernard Goldstein (2022): Interpretation in Electrodynamics, Atomic Theory, and Quantum Mechanics
J.C. Maxwell (1873): Faraday
E. Schrödinger (1926). On the relation between the quantum mechanics of Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan, and that of Schrödinger.
Guest expert : Giora Hon
Title tbc
Mackenzie Cooley (Hamilton College)
Commentator: tbc
Max Chervin Bridge, Brown University
Vaccines and Society Unit - University of Oxford
Panelists: TBA
Group Discussion: What do we mean by "science" when we study the history of science in early South Asia?
Co-facilitated by Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt University), Lisa Brooks (University of Alberta), and Dagmar Wujastyk (University of Alberta):
Topic: The Jōdo Shinshū Embrace of Science in Late Meiji and Taishō Japan: Science, Secularism, and Buddhism in the Thought of Ishikawa Seishō and Fujikawa Yū
Presenters: Tomoko Yoshida and Stephen Weldon
If you are able, please read the attached article that we will be discussing during this session.
Alexander Blum - Sharing Plans and Ideas for the 2025 Quantum Centenary
Ranee Prakash (Natural History Museum, London), "Ethnobotanical evidence from herbarium collections"
Kristen Frederick-Frost (Smithsonian)
*NOTE SPECIAL DATE*
"Translating, Trying and Modifying: Early Modern Ottoman Pharmacopeias"
Duygu Yildirim (University of Tennessee)
Commentator: tbc
Michael Holleran, "The Urban Ditch: Landscape, Life and Afterlives"
Michel Janssen - "Drawing the line between kinematics and dynamics in special relativity"
Expert Guest: Michel Janssen
Paul Smith (University of Warwick) on Cezanne and autistic color perception
Organizer: Giulia Simonini
November 14, 2024 (***RESCHEDULED***)
Dr Katherine Arnold, Lecturer in Environmental History at University of Liverpool
Title: The Will of Welwitsch: African Botanical Collections and Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century
Abstract:
Panel on Recent Books on the History of Global Health
A discussion with four authors on their recent books on the history of global health/ global health studies.
Panelists:
Yi-Tang Lin - Statistics and the Language of Global Health: Institutions and Experts in China, Taiwan, and the World, 1917-1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Carolina Matos - Gender, Communications, and Reproductive Health in International Health and Development (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023)
Exploring an Anti-Epidemic Protective Pill Recipe in the 15th Century Tibetan Medical Work, Relics of Countless Oral Instructions by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (1439-1475)
Barbara Gerke (University of Vienna)
Topic: Evolution, Strategy, and Nichiren Buddhism in Modern Japan.
Presenter: Clinton Godart
Anna Guasco, Oregon State University, "'Could do better to stick to his fish’: Knowledge, Power, and Authority in Gray Whale Science.”
Caleb Shelburne (Department of the History of Science, Harvard University) will present "Leeches for the ‘Sick Man of Europe’: Science and the Environment in the Ottoman Leech Industry, 1830-1870," followed by a discussion.
Wright, Aaron Sidney. “Nascent Pairs and Virtual Possibilities.” In More than Nothing: A History of the Vacuum in Theoretical Physics, 1925-1980. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190062804.003.0003.
Caroline Cornish (Kew), "Hidden hands and the development of economic botany"
Abstract:
We are delighted that in December we will host Michael Edwards, Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Sydney to discuss his work in progress:
Wheels Turning: Anthropological Solidarity, Engaged Buddhism, and a Return to the 1990s
Short Writings Roundtable
If you have a shorter piece--an abstract, a proposal, an op-ed, etc.--that you would like feedback on, this session is for you!
Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer - "Léon Rosenfeld’s general theory of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics“
Expert Guest: Donald Salisbury
Amy Woolf and Sarah Corbyn Woolf (Woolf Color and Design) on (color palettes) and creating and color schemes
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
Annotating the Bṛhatsaṃhitā in Persian? A Discussion
Lingli Li (EHESS - University of Göttingen)
Topic: Jinshu Kairyо̄: The 'Race Improvement' Debate in Japan, 1870-1890
Presenter: Subo Wijeyeratne
DEEPMED Project, "Visualizing the 3D Mediterranean (and beyond?): A Work in Progress Session"
January 9, 2025
Dr Abbi Flint, Research Associate in History at Newcastle University (UK)
and
Dr Rose Ferraby, independent archaeologist and artist (UK)
Title: Fish Out of Water: Exploring the History, Meaning and Materiality of a Museum Mercreature
Abstract:
*Note Special Date*
Suśruta Project Group Presentation
https://sushrutaproject.org/
Katharine Anderson, York University
Anna Toledano (Stanford), "Black and native laborers at the Viceregal Botanical Garden in late 18th-century Mexico City"
Andrea Weeks (George Mason University), "Lessons learned from SISRIS, a US-based initiative to support inclusive and sustainable collections-based biodiversity research infrastructure."
*Note Special Date*
TBA
Tanne Bloks
Sowerby's Chromatometer of 1809
Learn how to use a paper tool devised by James Sowerby. (1757-1822). He published the chromaometert in A New Elucidation of Colours, Original, Prismatic, and Material (1809) to show how to visualise spectral colors and, in particular, the inverted spectrum (notoriously) discussed by Goethe in his Farbenlehre (1810)
Organizer: Giulia Simonini
David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Net Losses: The Failures and Successes of Trawling in French Indochina"
Hugo Rueda (SSOM, McGill), "Taxonomical Clashes. Indigenous Material Culture in the Natural History Museum of Chile during the 19th century"
Lieb Celnik (Johns Hopkins). Revisiting "Polemics" and "History" sections of Goethe's Farbenlehre.
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
"'God's Gift to the People of the Orient': Coffee, Slavery, and Medicine in Early Modern Tuscany"
Lucia Dacome (University of Toronto)
Commentator: tbc
Derek Nelson, Everett Community College
UCLA Heat Lab
Panelists:
Bharat Venkat (UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics)
Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"
Ian Dooley (UCL) and others "Materiality of Color Printing Ink"
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage
Zi Yun Huang, University of Chicago
TBA
Divya Kumar-Dumas (Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW))
Jovita Yesilyurt (Natural History Museum London) and Christina Welch (University of Winchester) "Unearthing the contribution of Indigenous and enslaved African knowledge systems to the Saint Vincent Botanical Garden under Dr Anderson (1785-1811)"
Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
E. M. Nielsen, Brown University
Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde Berlin), Archival collections and specimens from German “Kamerun" in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
What is it about Prussian blue? [tentative]
Prussian blue has a winding history that includes a myth-like origin story, rapid international success, a range of adapted uses in art, industry & trade, medical uses, and contested efforts to understand its formation and structure.
I'm beginning to think about a meeting to discuss the multivalent nature of colors using Prussian blue as a reference point.
I would love to hear your recommendations (including your interest in contributing).
SL