Working Groups

In this session, we will read and discuss Katharine Gerbner's selected posts from her ongoing project on her grandfather, George Gerbner.

Richardson, Sarah S. The maternal imprint: The contested science of maternal-fetal effects. University of Chicago Press, 2021.

 
This year, our sessions function as a space for members to give and receive feedback on works-in-progress (WIP). This week we will engage with the following: 
 

Speaker:
Prof. Francesco Cassata
Full Professor in 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:

Bernard Lightman  (York) and Ruselle Meade (Cardiff) on 'The American biologist Edward Morse and his introduction of evolution into Japan'. 

Please note that this talk will be at a different time than usual: 9.30am Eastern on Monday January 20. 

A greater understandings of colour objects in museum and heritage collections: Digitising Autochromes

Katharine Anderson, York University, "The Artificial Perspective: William Beebe, the Modern Observer and Oceanic Natural History”

Spanish naturalists established the Viceregal Botanical Garden of New Spain in Mexico City in 1788 to advance agriculture, manufacturing, and medicine, while also cultivating agents of empire. Rather than build on the robust tradition of American botany, the Spanish appropriated this space, employing Creole students and servant workers to Europeanize local botanical knowledge. This talk revisits archival materials and methodologies used to uncover the contributions of Black and Indigenous laborers, whose roles remain obscured in official accounts.

 
Tuomas Räsänen (Professor, University of Eastern Finland) will present a talk: ‘Arachnophobia Finnish Style’ connected to the forthcoming book he is co-editing: "Human-Bug Encounters in Multispecies Networks" (Brill) followed by a discussion.

Alex Blum and Martin Jähnert - "Quantum mechanics, radiation, and the equivalence proof." Archive for the History of Exact Sciences (2024).

Reading:

Simon Schaffer, "Scientific Discoveries and the End of Natural Philosophy," Social Studies of Science 16, no. 3 (1986): 387–420.
 

Jason Chernesky, "Jeopardized Lives: Urban Environmental Inequalities and the Root Causes of HIV/AIDS among American Families, 1950-1980"

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)
 

Mark Liberman, Linguistic Data Consortium (TBA)

Marij van Strien “Was physics ever deterministic? The historical basis of determinism and the image of classical physics ”  

Guest: Marij van Strien

Primary Source:  Maxwell on “Progress of Science” 

Glenn Fleishman (independent comics and printing historian) on 'How Comics Were Made: Dawn of the Dots'

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).

 
"Mercurial Bloodletting: Bodily Fluids in Early Modern Alchemical Iconography"
Sergei Zotov (Warwick)
Commentator: TBC