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.
Kristen Frederick-Frost (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution), "It’s rad but radioactive: the dilemma of Robert Abbe’s medical radium"
*NOTE SPECIAL DATE & TIME*
"Translating, Trying and Modifying: Early Modern Ottoman Pharmacopeias"
Duygu Yildirim (University of Tennessee)
Commentator: Paula De Vos (San Diego State University)
We are delighted to welcome Margarita Valdovinos (Inst. Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM, Mexico), who will share a paper on "The Study of Amerindian Languages. The Maya Case." The paper will be discussed by Prof. Fernando Armstrong-Fumero (Smith College) and Emmanuel Szurek (EHESS, Paris)
Abstract:
Michael Holleran, "The Urban Ditch: Landscape, Life and Afterlives"
*NOTE SPECIAL DATE*
Amanda Lanzillo, Pious Labour: Islam, Artisanship, and Technology in Colonial India (Berkeley: UC Press.), introduction & chapter 5.
- Nicholas Misukanis, The Battle on the Border: Gorleben, Nuclear Waste, and Helmut Schmidt’s Quest for German Energy Autonomy
John Goldsmith (University of Chicago), "Information Theory for Linguists"
Michel Janssen - "Drawing the line between kinematics and dynamics in special relativity"
Guest Expert: Michel Janssen
Paul Smith (University of Warwick) "Cezanne, sensations of colour, and autism"
The essay is available below.
Our next meeting (Wednesday, 13 November, 12:00PM EST (UTC -5:00) will feature discussion of a work in Progress. Paul Smith has offered to present "Cézanne, sensations of colour, and autism", a draft of a chapter of his book project on Cézanne, perception, and autism.
*NOTE SPECIAL TIME*
Susanna Ferguson (Smith College): God’s Harmonies, Multispecies Hierarchies, and Plant Belonging in the Arab Renaissance
November 14, 2024 (***RESCHEDULED***)
Dr Katherine Arnold, Lecturer in Environmental History at University of Liverpool (UK)
Title: The Will of Welwitsch: African Botanical Collections and Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century
Speaker:
Dra. Ágata Ignaciuk Klemba (Spain)
Full Professor, Universidad de Granada
Department of Anatomical Pathology and History of Science
Presentation:
"Gendering Contraceptive Technologies in Communist Poland."
The lecture will be delivered in English.
Suggested Readings:
Coming soon.
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)
During the plague outbreak in Gujarat (1994), the SARS outbreak (2003), and the recent
COVID-19 pandemic, Tibetan physicians in India produced and distributed protective anti-
epidemic pill amulets. One of these is the “9-compound black pill” or Nakpo Gujor (nag po dgu
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.”
In this session, we will read and discuss Anna Shechtman’s draft chapter, “From Text to Media.”
Carlo Sariego "“Is Daddy Having a Baby?” Speculation and Race-Making in 20th-century Histories of Male Pregnancy""
Dr Orsolya Mednanszky (J. Paul Getty Museum) on ‘Healing the Body, Healing the Soul: Methods of Therapy in Medieval Europe’ at the Walters Art Museum (20 June-15 December 2024)
A discussion with Konstantinos Chatzis, author of Forecasting Travel in Urban America: The Socio-Technical Life of an Engineering Modeling World, Engineering Studies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023), https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10359.001.0001.
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.
Carlo Sariego, Department of Sociology & Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University
“Is Daddy Having a Baby?” Speculation and Race-Making in 20th-century Histories of Male Pregnancy"
Caroline Cornish (Kew), "Hidden hands and the development of economic botany"
Abstract:
"Disease and Death in Early 19th Century Istanbul as Recorded in Ottoman Death Registers" Gülhan Balsoy & Cihangir Gündoğdu (Istanbul Bilgi University)
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!
Anna Toledano (Los Altos History Museum), Nathan Smith (National Museum of Wales), Felipe Eguiarte Souza, (Pavek Museum of Electronic Communication), Olin Moctezuma-Burns (University of Cambridge), "Lost Objects: Histories and Futures of Collections": A Reprisal and Discussion of the 2024 CALM Caucus HSS Session
This session will feature a discussion of this year's CALM-sponsored session on "Lost Objects," which will take place at this year's HSS Meeting in Merida. The session abstract is as follows:
Whitney Barlow Robles (Visiting Scholar, Dartmouth College) will present on her new book project, The Collector’s Paradox, followed by a discussion of the talk and a pre-circulated chapter from the project titled “Specimania,” followed by a discussion.
Abstract: A contradiction lurks behind most museum artifacts: to be preserved, they first must be
destroyed. Museums are not simply reliquaries that save things from oblivion. They are also the
Judy Kaplan (Science History Institute), "The Information Science of Linguistics"
Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer - "Léon Rosenfeld’s general theory of constrained Hamiltonian dynamics“
Guest Experts: Donald Salisbury, Kurt Sundermeyer
Amy Woolf and Sarah Corbyn Woolf (Woolf Color and Design) on color palettes and creating and color schemes
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
Oleksandr Polianichev (Södertörn University): Russia's Own Tropics: Empire and Exotic Plants in the South Caucasus
- Building a Bibliography! What are the best works in energy history? Both classics and new works?
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
We (Janine + Hanin) are going on a break this December and will be back with a vengeance in January 2026. As a present to the members of this exciting, energizing, and downright colorful working group, we are preparing a giveaway game. So stay tuned to the newsletters we send you and who knows what Santa Clause will be sending you this holiday season!
We look forward to seeing you all in January and to enjoy a wonderful new year together filled with niche color processes, even nich-er scientists and off-the-beaten-track collections.
DEEPMED Project, "Visualizing the 3D Mediterranean (and beyond?): A Work in Progress Session"
Margaret Andersen "“France has about 1,500 artificial beings!”: Artificial insemination by donor (AID) in post-war France"
Speaker:
Prof. Francesco Cassata
Professor of Contemporary History, University of Genoa
Presentation:
"Reconstructing 'Dante's Race': Fabio Frassetto and the International Committee for Anthropological Standardization (SAS)."
The lecture will be delivered in English.
Suggested Readings:
Coming soon.
To learn more about Prof. Cassata, please click here.
Sebastian De Haro - "Noether’s Theorems and Energy in General Relativity"
Felix Klein - "Zu Hilberts erster Note über die Grundlagen der Physik"
Guest Expert: Sebastian De Haro
Deadly Colour: A Roundtable
Tony Travis (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) on 'Dangerous Dyes: A Different History of the Synthetic Dye Industry'and Chiara Palandri (National Library of Norway) on 'A Voyage pittoresque in Norway through Colour Prints, 1789–c.1815'
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage
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:
- Aleksandra Kaye and Bernardo S. Buarque, From Wells to Woes: Divergent Legacies of Early Oil Extraction in Galicia and Taranaki
- Mercedes Fernández-Paradas, Carlos Larrinaga Rodríguez, and Antonio J. Pinto, Franco-Hispanic Energy Market in the 1930s: How Gas and Electricity Evolved During European Interwar
*Note Special Date*
The Suśruta Project Group Presentation
https://sushrutaproject.org/
Dominik Wujastyk (University of Alberta), Deepro Chakraborty (University of Alberta), Harshal Bhatt (The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda), Vandana Lele, and other Suśruta Project Group Members TBD
Richardson, Sarah S. The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
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*
Ritual and Medicine in Indian Alchemy
Patricia Sauthoff (Hong Kong Baptist University)
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
Louis Champion (IRD France - 232 DIADE): L'origine et la diffusion de l'hibiscus (hibiscus sabdarifa): Parcours d'une plante aux racines africaines et son impact social et culturel
[talk in French with a powerpoint presentation in English, the Q&A will be in French and English]
Andrew Watson, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Saskatchewan and executive team member of the Network in Canadian History & Environment | Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l'environnement (NiCHE).
- Nataliia Laas, Waste Anxieties in the Late Soviet Union
- Jan Wachter, Energy Policy in East Central Europe
David McCaskey, University of California, Riverside, "Net Losses: The Failures and Successes of Trawling in French Indochina"
Don Opitz
Hugo Rueda (SSOM, McGill), "Taxonomical Clashes. Indigenous Material Culture in the Natural History Museum of Chile during the 19th century"
Leib Celnik (Johns Hopkins). Revisiting "Polemics" and "History" sections of Goethe's Farbenlehre.
Organizer: Sarah Lowengard
*NOTE DIFFERENT TIME ZONE CHANGE WITH NORTH AMERICA*
Olga Smith (Newcastle University): Ecopolitical Aesthetics of Weeds
Leah Malamut, PhD candidate, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
"'God's Gift to the People of the Orient': Coffee, Slavery, and Medicine in Early Modern Tuscany"
Lucia Dacome (University of Toronto)
Commentator: tbc
- Jake Stephen Milner, Decarbonising Deindustrial Places: Industrial Collective Memories in the Age of Green Economic Development
- Aditi Basu, Hinduism and Sun Deification in India: Relevance in the 21st Century as Solar Energy
Some reflections on the practices of proofs in Sanskrit mathematical texts, with a special emphasis on Śaṅkara Vāriyar’s work on Mādhava’s procedure to approximate the circumference of a circle.
Agathe Keller (Sphere, CNRS / Université Paris Cité)
Derek Nelson, Everett Community College
Kristine Palmieri, PhD
Gastwissenschaftlerin / Visiting Researcher
Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklarung
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
UCLA Heat Lab
Panelists:
Bharat Venkat (UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics)
Enrico Beltramini, Notre Dame de Namur University, California
Akosua Paries-Osei (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Seditious Seed of Forbidden Flowers: The legacy of Okra in the Reproductive Resistance of Enslaved women"
Pedro Raposo (The Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University) and Tiago Saraiva (Drexel University)
Teaching with Collections
Ian Dooley (School of Advanced Study, University of London) on 'A Pigment Paradigm Shift: How British Printing Ink Industrialization Revolutionized Color Printing in the Late Nineteenth Century'
Organizer: Elizabeth Savage
Sahar Bazzaz (College of the Holy Cross): Plants of the Red Sea Littoral: PE Botta's Expedition to Yemen, 1836
April 10, 2025
Dr Nathan Bossoh, Research Fellow in History at Southampton University (UK)
Title: Imperial Legacies and Decolonial Futures: Curating the 'Wellcome' African Medical Material
"Quarantine in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Space, Objects, and Bodies"
Marina Inì (University of Cambridge)
Commentator tbc
- Nicholas Ostrum, Extracting Concessions and Losing Ground: The Twin Failures of Souédie and the Euphrates Dam, 1963-1969
Zi Yun Huang, University of Chicago
The Sumhuram Yakṣī, an index of metal reuse?
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)"
Edwin Coomasaru (London): Plantation Ecologies in Sri Lankan Art: Gender, Sexuality and Environmental Aesthetics
- Syllabus share! What should be on a syllabus for energy history and energy-related topics?
Joyce Dixon, title TBD
Organizer: Giulia Siimonini
Methods in the Material Histories of South Asia: Snapshot-presentations and Discussion
Join us for a special meeting! We invite you to use an object or an image to introduce your work in the material history of South Asia in a snapshot presentation. These presentations will be a springboard into a discussion on methods in the Material Histories of South Asia. Pre-circulated readings TBD.
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.
Banji Chona (Lusaka): The Fragile Lexicon: How Botanical Words Fail to Reflect Zambezia’s Living Plant Knowledge