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.
For our first meeting of 2023, Matteo Bortolini from the Università di Padova, Italy will join us for discussion of his work-in-progress:
“'A Twenty-Four Hour Job': Hildred and Clifford Geertz’s First Foray into the Field and the Scholarly Persona of the Anthropologist”
History of Informatics in Latin America. Marcelo Vianna, Lucas de Almeida Pereira & Colette Perold
Valérie Nègre, “Craft Knowledge in the Age of Encyclopedism”, in Lauren R. Cannady and Jennifer Ferng (dir.), Crafting Enlightenment. Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks, Liverpool University Press and University of Oxford, 2021, p. 303-333.
Valérie Nègre, “Production and circulation of Technical Knowledge on Building Sites at the End of the Eighteenth Century”, Journal of the History of Science and Technology, numéro special ‘Building Sites for Making Knowledge’, vol. 15, n° 2, December 2021, p. 17-33.
Nuala Caomhanach (New York University), "From Unique to Ubiquitous: The Conflict of Endemism in Conservation Law"
"Visceral Attraction: Dissection and Desire in Japan, 1879-1930"
Kandra Polatis
Catherine Dunlop (Montana State University)
The readings this week approach the theme of “Small Stories with Big Significance” through the lens of the mistral, an iconic local wind that blows through the southern French region of Provence. The three articles invite readers to think about the connections among regional weather, culture, and identity in the modern world. These pieces all draw from material in Catherine Dunlop’s book manuscript Windswept: The Mistral and the Making of Provence, forthcoming with University of Chicago Press, 2024.
Cholera, the Hijaz Railroad: A Reversed Reasoning? - Benan Grams (Georgetown University, Washington DC.)
Lauren Tilton and Taylor Arnold, University of Richmond
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
During this meeting, we will discuss the "Writing" section of the planned volume, featuring the following essays:
- Michaela Clark, "Images"
- Jessica Martucci and Britt Dahlberg, "Digital Humanities"
- Ayah Nuriddin, "Silences and Violences"
- Claire Clark & Amy Sullivan, "Language"
- Courtney Thompson, "Citation"
The essay drafts will be uploaded on February 2.
Presenter 1: Dafne Cruz Porchini, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), “The artist Fermín Revueltas and the Visual Imaginaries of Technology in Mexico: the mural Allegory of Productivity (1934)”
Epistemic Images: A Discussion
With Sietske Fransen (Herziana)
Response: Alicia Petersen (Yale)... and all OISH Members
Katja Bruisch, “More-than-human histories of extraction: Labour at the margins of Russia’s fossil economy.”
Title: “Carthorses, Jades, and Equine Disability”
We'll discuss the introduction and first chapter of Fanny Gribensky's new book, Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859–1955 (Chicago, 2023).
"Competent From Personal Experience": Networks of Engineers and Decision Making behind South Korea's Mungyong Cement Plant
A work-in-progress by Juyoung Lee, PhD candidate in history of science and technology at Johns Hopkins University (USA). This is a chapter draft from Juyoung's forthcoming dissertation.
Chapter draft will be available for download by 10 February 2023.
Guest: Jorge Quetzal Argueta Prado, México.
Title of the presentation: El cultivo del maíz en México en la primera mitad del siglo XX: modernizaciones contenciosas y reflexividades ambientales.
Reading: Text will be attached soon.
Previous Works:
Speaker: Anthony Cerulli, Professor of South Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Topic: Prof. Cerulli will introduce his new monograph, The Practice of Texts: Education and Healing in South India (University of California Press, 2022). The book is available as Open Access in several formats.
Kunyan Zheng, Trinity College Dublin, "Medical knowledge of marine fish in early modern England"
Andrew Meade McGee, National Air and Space Museum, “The Electronic Origins of the Neoliberal Order: Computers, Digital Technologies, and the Re-Shaping of State-Market Relations, 1968-1988."
Histories of Science in Latin America and Asia: A Conversation Across Regions
Food, Science, and State in Latin America
Session Coordinator: Stefan Pohl (Universidad de Rosario, Colombia)
Presenters:
Sören Brinckman (University of Wrocław), author of Milk for the Tropics! Food Regulation and Nutrition Policy using the Example of Urban Milk Supply in Brazil (1889-1964) [written in German].
Joshua F. Frens-String (The University of Texas at Austin), author of Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile.
Ally Fulton (University of California-Davis), “Stenographic Specimens in the Preservation of American Science”
"Elizabeth Agassiz's Stenography and the Preservation of Professional Science"
Allison Fulton
Special session for the discussion of future directions for the history of science in early SA, and especially funding.
Merits of the Plague by Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani: Reflections on a New Translation - Joel Blecher (George Washington University) and Mairaj Syed (University of California, Davis)
Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, University of Texas at San Antonio
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
During this meeting, we will discuss the "Teaching" section of the planned volume, featuring the following essays:
- Antoine Johnson & Gloria Lockett, "Decolonizing the Syllabus"
- Beatriz Pichel, "Images and Primary Sources"
- Sharrona Pearl, "Grading and Assignments"
- Cornelia Lambert, "Constructive Discomfort"
- Shannon Withycombe, "Teaching Graduate Students about Ethics"
- Lan Li, "Ethics of Teaching Future Health Professionals"
The essay drafts will be uploaded on March 2.
Presenter 1: Mónica Salas Landa, Lafayette College, “A Postcard View of Progress:” Pemex’s Visual Propaganda and the Aesthetics of Mexico’s Technological Nationalism, 1950”
“Cutting the Body: Jacopo Berengario da Carpi and the Anatomical Woodcut”
Ariella Minden (Toronto / Herziana)
Response: Taylor McCall (Medieval Academy)
Nathan N. Kapoor, "The Coal Answer: The Huntly Power Station and New Zealand's Energy Regime."
Symptoms of Insurrection: Contagion, Disease, and Social Disorder in Maria Edgeworth's Ennui
Kelli Smith-Biwer
Dissertation chapter - TBA
¡Alerta! Engineering on Shaky Ground
A discussion with Elizabeth Reddy, PhD, of her recently published book with MIT's Engineering Studies Series, ¡Alerta! Engineering on Shaky Ground (MIT Press, 2023).
CHANGE IN PROGRAM
Speaker: Dr Lisa Brooks
Topic: tba
Nancy Ko, Columbia University
Alexander Statman (UCLA), “Canal: Cross-Cultural Encounters and the Control of Water"
Duygu Yildirim (University of Tennessee), "Coffee: Of Melancholic Turkish Bodies and Sensory Experiences"
Discussant: Ahmed Ragab (Johns Hopkins University)
"Engineering on Trial: The 1920 Nile Projects Controversy and Epistemologies of Measurement”
Anthony Greco, University of California, Santa Barbara
This work-in-progress explores how medieval Arabic literary traditions, Egyptian nationalist engineers, and British physical scientists shaped the methods of hydraulic science in the Nile Valley of 1920. The physical and social networks which produced and circulated hydraulic data on the Nile reflected the complex relationship between science, colonialism, and national liberation.
Discussions on smallpox and smallpox vaccination according to Şanizade - Yasemin Akçagüner (Columbia University, New York)
Natalia Gándara (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso). Title TBA
Marta Lourenco (Universidade de Lisboa, Museu Nacional de Historia e da Cienca), Talk Title TBA
"Mother Hens: Women and the social reproduction of medical illustration"
Drew Danielle Belsky
Title: Alluring Stimulant: Poison, the Body, and a Reinterpretation of Side Effects
Roopika Risam, Dartmouth College
Abstract: TBD. Check back a week or two before the meeting date to access the pre-circulated paper and Zoom link.
During this meeting, we will discuss the "Historian" section of the planned volume, featuring the following essays:
- Barron Lerner, "Positionality"
- Richard McKay, "Becoming an Ethical Historian"
- Kylie Smith, "Reparatory History"
- Adam Biggs, "Historical Therapeutics"
- Nicole Schroeder, "Accessibility"
- Jess Dillard-Wright, "Advocacy and Activism"
The essay drafts will be uploaded on April 6.
Presenter 1: Vanessa Freije, University of Washington, "UFO, Aliens, and other Imaginaries of Satellite Technology in Hidalgo, Mexico”
- Michiel Bron, “Uranium’s geographies: How the geographical properties of uranium determined the formation of an infamous cartel and the involvement of oil companies in the uranium market.”
- Hilary Blum, “The Public Need to Know: Public Relations, Public History, and Secrecy at the Hanford Nuclear Site.”
Speaker: Dr Cristina Pecchia, University of Vienna and Austrian Academy of Sciences
Topic: TBA
Dominik Hünniger, Universität Hamburg, "The museum at sea - collecting ecologies of marine micro-fauna at the Museum Godeffroy (ca. 1861-1885)"
Julia Sanchez-Dorado, Technische Universität Berlin and Susan Sterrett, Wichita State University
Noah Kahrs
dissertation chapter - details and draft TBA
Paper Discussion: 'Revolutionary Vision: Myopia, Socialist Youth and Public Health Campaigns in China (1960-1976)’
Yixue Yang (University of California, San Diego)
Discussant: Dora Vargha (Humboldt University Berlin)
"Imagining A ‘Peatlandian Humanities’ for the ‘Lungs of Humanity’: An African Carbon Sink in the Congo Basin and the Climate Emergency"
Frank Blibo, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cold War Cartographic Technologies
Presenters:
Julie Gibbings, The University of Edinburgh
Sebastian Diaz Angel, Cornell University
During this meeting, we will discuss the "Museums & Archives" section of the planned volume, featuring the following essays:
- Melissa Grafe, "Specimens"
- Aisling Shalvey, "Human Remains"
- Katrina Jirik, "Disability"
- Amanda Mahoney, "Stewardship"
- Shelley Saggar, "Decolonizing Archives and Museums"
- Aparna Nair, "Commercialization of Remains and Records"
The essay drafts will be uploaded on April 27.
Pedro Raposo (Martha Hamilton and I. Wistar Morris III Executive Director, Library and Archives, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University) and Paul Callomon (Collections Manager, Malacology, The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University), "People, Nature, and the Social Extension of Specimens"
“Being Natural”: Science, Environment, Sexuality and the Life of Marston Bates"
Megan Raby
Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity
- Presenter 1: Leida Fernandez
- Presenter2 : Sonia Robles
- Presenter 3: Daniel Rebouças
- Discussant: Mónica Salas Landa
- Moderator: Diana Montaño
"Who Is a Maker? Artisan Knowledge in Medieval India."
Eric Gurevitch (Vanderbilt)
Response: (tbc)
Dr. Helge Wendt, “Building materials from coal-waste. An extension of the history of energy in the interwar period in France and Germany.”
Speaker: Dr Vijaya Deshpande
Title: TBA (on a Sanskrit work on alchemy. See the BORI publication launch: https://youtu.be/jKJJaIJPOEA )
Abstract: TBA
Natalia Gándara Chacana, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso, Chile
Patrick McCray, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shireen Hamza (Harvard) and Eric Moses Gurevitch (Vanderbilt), "The Promise of Medieval Sciences, the Perils of Global History."
· Tobah Aukland-Peck, “Mineral landscapes: The Mine and British Modernism.”
· V. M. Roberts, “Grandpa Tallman’s Engine.”
Paper discussion
Siddhartha Mukherjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University), "Controlling the Currents: Electricity Crisis and State Response in Delhi during the Second World War"
Discussant: Victor Seow (Harvard University)
James Allison, “Seeing Coal: The Geologists, Local Actors, and Distant Capitalists that Industrialized Appalachia.”