Working Groups

"God's Instrument: Bohemian gems, efficacy and medicine"

Suzanna Ivanic (University of Kent) 

Comentator: Brigitte Buettner (Smith College)

Eyad Houssami, “Rivers, Rhythm, and Roots” a chapter in Unwiltable Spirit: Ecology, Agriculture, and Education in Modern Lebanon

NOTE SPECIAL DATE

John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh)

"Foucault and the archive as ‘system of enunciability’"

Eugenics in Japan

(Note as of today (2/7/2026), I have changed the readings because one of the members in our group who suggested works on the list I posted a couple of days ago will not be available for our Feburary meeting. Please read the revised list below--and the PDF attached reflects these new readings.)

On Monday/Tuesday, February 16/17, we will be discussing the following works: 

Fraunhofer spectra – their place in the evolution of photography
By Dr. Alan Hodgson

Aaron Van Neste, Oberlin College, "The Rise and Fall of the South African Pilchard and Anchovy Fisheries (1950-1980)"

Speaker: Audrey Ke Zhao, UC Santa Cruz & CHSTM Research Fellow

Format: Presentation with Q&A

Title: The Global Journey of Ginseng: A Study of its Impact on Early Modern Trade and Cultural Exchange

“Healthy Beauty: The Medicalization of Aesthetic Norms in the Late Ottoman Empire” - Berrak Burçak Della Fave (Bilkent University)

Kenneth Zysk (University of Copenhagen)

Palmistry or the system of the bodily lines (Rekhāśāstra) and its spread westward

Eline Tabak (Postdoctoral researcher, Oulu University, Finland)

Storying insect decline: the cultural side of insect loss in the age of extinction

Fred Quivik, title to be determined

Author, Smoke and Tailings: An Environmental History of Butte and Anaconda, Montana (University of Nevada Press, 2025).

We are seeing the resurgence of mining engineering, with the need for rare earths and other materials. How does the history of mining resonate with renewed interest in mining engineering?

Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi (United Arab Emirates University)

A discussion with Gregory Dreicer, author of American Bridge: Reinventing Building, Making History (MIT Press, 2026).

We will start our discussion with a short presentation from the author: 

Wood, Iron, and History: How Stories Have Shaped Materials and Structures—and Stopped Us from Learning About the Reinvention of Construction

Seminar with Victoria Munn (University of Auckland) on Early Modern Hair Dye Recipes

Alex Golub (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa), "Evolution and Revolution: Marshall Sahlins, Evolutionary Anthropology, and Activism against the Vietnam War at the University of Michigan, 1957-1967"

Speaker: Tiziana Beltrame

Assistant Professor - History of Science, Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World (DiSSGeA), University of Padua

Co-Editor with Yaël Kreplak of "Les réserves des musées – Écologies des collections" (2024) https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.php?id=11524 

Session Title: Museum cohabitations: how to make room for objects and their digital avatars?

Yovanna Pineda, "Public Health and the Urban Waters of the Riachuelo in Dock Sud, Buenos Aires City"

Sarah Finn (Talk Title TBA)

Deren Ertas (Harvard University) 

"From the Mine to the Market: A History of Silver in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire"

Robert Edwards (UC San Diego / Irvine) 

"Anticolonial Methods in the History of Linguistic Anthropology "