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.
"Unidentified color positives in Slovak collections - Research and challenges" by Kitti Baráthová
Sean Seyer (Verville Fellow, National Air and Space Museum; Associate Professor of History, University of Kansas), "Battle Lines Drawn: The Postwar Continuation of the Air Trust Narrative"
Alessandra Passariello, Naples Zoological Station, "The Bay of Porto Paone: The First “Tiny Underwater Nature Reserve” in the Gulf of Naples (1960-1966)"
We'll discuss the Introduction and Chapter 3 of Deirdre Loughridge's Sounding Human (Chicago University Press, 2023).
Gender, Masculinity and Reproduction
Here, we will explore how gender and masculinity shapes how we think about human reproductive experiences and the histories we write about them.
This week, we will be joined by Rene Almeling (Yale University) who will help guide discussions and talk about the motivation of and inspiration behind her award winning book GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men's Reproductive Health.
In preparation for the meeting, we ask that participants explore the following pieces:
Black and Indigenous Mining Technologies and Knowledges in the Americas
Presenters:
Jenny Bulstrode (UCL)
Allison Bigelow (University of Virginia)
Speaker:
Dr. Mércio Pereira Gomes (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Anthropologist, Associate Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ, Brazil.
Former President of Funai (National Indigenous People Foundation) from 2003 to 2007.
Dominik Hünniger (Curator for Innovation Research, German Port Museum, Hamburg) and Lisa Onaga (Senior Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) in conversation with contributors Leah Lui-Chivizhe, Jude Philp, and Luísa Reis-Castro, discuss the new focus section 'Magnifying Insect Histories' in Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society, Volume 115, Number 1, March 2024.
Michael Gordin, Princeton University
"Genghis Khan with a Nuclear Reactor: Three Centuries of 'Western Science' in Russia"
Roy Wagner, ETH Zürich
"Indian Mathematics Can’t Win"
We are very pleased to have Hande Birkalan-Gedik (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) join us in May.
Title: Eugène Pittard, Bayan Afet, and Others: Actors and Milieus of Anthropological Knowledge and the Formation of the Turkish History Thesis in the 1930s
Leah Malamut, "Sisters of the Beekeeping Fraternity: American Women in Apiculture, 1870-1920"
Machines and Urbanisation in the Amazon
Lorena Córdoba (CONICET/UCA and Ca' Foscari University Venice).
Adrián Lerner (Cambridge University and Freie Universität Berlin).
Slava Savova, "Re-Ottomanizing modernity: domesticating balneology in early to mid-20th century Bulgaria"
This dissertation chapter examines the local intermingling of a specific type of sociomedical architectures – Ottoman and European thermal baths - and the persistent vernacular uses that bind them together.
Hannah Swan, Lucas Richert (UW-Madison, School of Pharmacy), "Pharmacy History in the
Twenty-First Century: Modernizing the Edward Kremers Research Library and Archive”
This presentation will summarize the activities and findings of a 3-year National
Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)-funded project, “Accessing the History of Health,
Pharmacy, and Medicines,” which focuses on the archival collections of the Edward Kremers
Research Library and Archive, held jointly by the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy
We will discuss a work in progress by Max Bautista Perpinyà, UC Louvain (Belgium), "Pines, orchards, and forest genetics in the Spanish political transiton: from ‘improvement’ to ‘conservation’ (1966-1999)"
K-12 Teaching with Spring Greeney (Friends Select School, Philadelphia) and Andrew Bozanic (Padua Academy, Wilmington, Delaware).
Erik Curiel on Howard Stein's "On the Notion of Field in Newton, Maxwell and Beyond"
and Maxwell's "Faraday's Lines" and "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field"
Instructions:
Stein paper:
1. Beginning up to Part II section 3 (pp. 264-282)
2. Part III (pp. 285-287)
Maxwell "Faraday's Lines":
1. Introduction up to section "Theory of Dielectrics" (pp. 155-177 in Maxwell's *Scientific Papers*)
2. Part II, pp. 188-195 (up to paragraph starting "Before entering...")
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Neda Saeedi (Tehran / Berlin): "Swear by the Fig, Swear by the Olive"
"Swear by the Fig, Swear by the Olive" explores urban and territorial landscapes and their flora, used to justify land ownership and deprivation in conflict zones.
Mollusks. Between Resource, Specimen and Race, 1860-1920
Brooke Penaloza-Patzak, Marie Jahoda Fellow, Inst. for Economic & Social History, University of Vienna
&
Tamara Fernando, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University
No events scheduled.
Workshop participants--see you at Stanford University for the face-to-face workshop.
Note, we are meeting on May 3rd this month, so as to avoid a clash with the AAHM Meeting
"Rethinking “Infirmity” in Crusader Jerusalem: A New History of the Hospital of St. John"
Katharine Park (Harvard)
Reponse: Peter Jones (Cambridge)
- Odinn Melsted and Candida Sánchez-Burmester, “Geoscience Spillover: The Oil Industry and Geothermal Development in Greater California, 1960s-1970s”
- Dante LaRiccia, “Kurt Waldheim, the United Nations, and the Campaign for a ‘World Energy Order’
Chen-Pang Yeang, "Information, Cryptography, and Noise"
“The Mad Butler of Gray’s Inn: Service, Disability, and the Limits of Early Modern Institutional Care”
Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development
A discussion with Anto Mohsin, Assistant Professor in the Liberal Arts Program at Northwestern University in Qatar, of his recently published book, Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2023).
Eugenics and Its Afterlives: The Afterlives of Eugenics Collective at Yale University
Confirmed Presenters:
Dan HoSang
Are the Elements and the Pañcabhūta the Same (Thing)? Epistemic Objects between
Science, Religion, and Philosophy in Colonial North India, c.1920
Dr. Charu Singh (University of Cambridge)
Caring for early chromogenic film: a methodological approach to understand its use and significance through Portuguese collections by Lénia Oliveira Fernandes
Jonathan Galka, Harvard University, “'The offer which the ocean has given us': The Law of the Sea, the New International Economic Order, and the Promises of Manganese Nodules in the Global 1970s"
Paul Keyser, Independent Scholar
"Neither Triumph Nor Telos"
Nithyanand Rao, Doctoral Student, University of California, San Diego.
Fraser and Koberinski (2016), "The Higgs mechanism and superconductivity: A case study of formal analogies" and Anderson (1963) "Plasmons, Gauge Invariance, and Mass"
Guests: Doreen Fraser and Adam Koberinski
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Sahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross): Plants of the Red Sea Littoral: PE Botta's Expedition to Yemen, 1836
Katherine Arnold, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU München
"Windows to the Surgeon: Eye Diseases, Remedies, and Images in Early Modern German Print and Manuscript"
Alisha Rankin (Tufts)
Response: Felix Jäger (Courtauld)
- Joya John, Energy Histories, Museums, and Postcolonial Development in India
Evolution of Conservation Approaches for Autochromes: Insights from Clara von Waldthausen and Luisa Casella
Autochromes present unique challenges due to the specific characteristics of their material composition. Over time, few conservators and conservation scientists have dedicated efforts to understand and address these challenges, resulting in a nuanced evolution of conservation approaches. This discussion explores that research, focusing on the contributions of Clara von Waldthausen and Luisa Casella within this landscape.
Pamela Overmann, head curator for the Naval Art Collection, United States Navy History and Heritage Command
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.
Chuyoung Won, Catholic University College of Medicine, Seoul
Jaehwan Hyun, Pusan National University, Busan
"Teaching History of (Western) Science? History of Science in General Education in South Korea "
Plants in Africa and the Global South: Multi-Species Materialities, Ecologies, and Aesthetics (MMEA)
Maxmillian J Chuhila (University of Dar es Salaam): Green Imperialism and Biomedical Campaigns in Colonial Tanganyika
Reproducing History: Writing Histories of the Personal
This session will focus on how historians have used their own healthcare experiences to complement and inform their research and advocacy work.
Alison Glassie, Northeastern University
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